Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France [electronic resource]

MESMERISM

and the End of the
Enlightenment in France

MESMERISM

AND THE END OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT IN FRANCE

MESMERISM

and the End of the Enlightenment in France
ROBERT DARNTON

HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS / CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
AND LONDON, ENGLAND

© Copyright 1968
by the President and Fellows of Harvard College

The author has made an online version of this work available
under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0
License. Attribute all licensed uses to Robert Darnton (author)
and Harvard University Press (publisher).

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 68-25607
ISBN 0-674-56951-2 (paper)

For complete license terms, visit
creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

Creative Commons license negotiated with assistance from:

AUTHORS
ALLIANCE

Learn more at authorsalliance.org/reversion

TO THE MEMORY OF MY PARENTS
AND TO JOHN

PREFACE TO THE CREATIVE COMMONS EDITION

PREFACE TO THE CREATIVE COMMONS EDITION

I am making the first two books I published available
online and free of charge through the Authors Alliance, be-
cause I hope in at least a small way to promote the diffusion
of knowledge. They are still in print, but they exhausted their
commercial viability long ago. The first, Mesmerism and the
End of the Enlightenment in France, was published in 1968. I
like to joke that the royalties from it provide me with enough
revenue to take my wife to dinner once every three years — if
she pays for her half of the bill. The second book, The Business
of Enlightenment: A Publishing History of the Encyclopedic,
1775-1800, published in 1979, still attracts quite a few readers,
although not enough purchasers to subsidize many evenings
in a restaurant. Most authors lose little revenue by making old
or out-of-print books available for free on a Creative Com-
mons license. And they gain a great deal: access to readers.

More than anything else, I want to see my books reach
new readers. I suspect most authors share this goal though, to
be sure, writers who live from their keyboards need to balance
their desire to reach readers with their need to make money.
More power to them. But most of us, especially in the aca-
demic world, care primarily about the circulation of our ideas,
and we do not want our books to die after their commercial
lives have ended. How can you give your book new life? Make
it available with help from the Authors Alliance. Follow the
directions in the Authors Alliance guide, Understanding Rights
Reversion: When, Why, & How to Regain Copyright and Make
Your Book More Available, and have it distributed from an
open-access repository — even through the collections offered
to the public by the Digital Public Library of America. In do-
ing so, you are not doling out charity. You are ensuring that
your work's continuing impact and relevance are not limited
by its commercial life.

Of course, you probably will need to win the agreement
of your publisher. I was fortunate in that the Harvard Univer-

PREFACE TO THE CREATIVE COMMONS EDITION

sity Press generously agreed to provide the rights needed to
publicly release the books online. I feel grateful for this sup-
port. At the same time, the HUP may benefit from its gener-
osity, because exposure to the online editions can make some
readers want to purchase print copies. A book that sits on a
shelf, read by only a few persons with access to that library,
will never circulate as widely as an Authors Alliance version of
the same text. The ancient printed book may be rediscovered
after decades of neglect, but more likely it will be forgotten.
Deposit it in an open-access repository, put it within the range
of search engines, and sit back with the satisfaction that it will
live again as part of the general endeavor to make all knowl-
edge available to all humans.

Cambridge, Massachusetts
June 2015

Robert Darnton

PREFACE TO THE CREATIVE COMMONS EDITION

PREFACE

PREFACE vii

This little book has a large purpose: it attempts to
examine the mentality of literate Frenchmen on the eve
of the Revolution, to see the world as they saw it, before
the Revolution threw it out of focus. So presumptuous
an undertaking must fail, for who can hope to peer into
the minds of men who have been dead for almost two
centuries? But it is worth attempting and may attain some
degree of accuracy through the use of neglected clues to
that mentality, which have been left scattered in the
scientific periodicals and pamphlets of the time, in scraps
of popular songs and cartoons that were hawked in the
streets, in the letters-to-the-editor and paid announce-
ments of publications that one might have found lying
about eighteenth-century drawing rooms and cafes, and
finally in private letters, diaries, police reports, and
records of club meetings that have survived in various
manuscript collections. Such material leaves a strong
impression of at least the interests of the reading public
in the 1780's, and these interests provide some surprising
information about the character of radicalism at that time.
They show how radical ideas filtered down from treatises
like Rousseau's Social Contract and circulated at the
lowest level of literacy.

Faced with the impossibility of knowing all the topics
of interest, even among the elite who left accounts of
them, I have limited this study to what seems to have
been the hottest topic — science in general, mesmerism
in particular. If the reader recoils with a feeling that this
may be indeed too surprising, too quackish a subject for
his attention, then he may appreciate the chasm of time
that separates him from the Frenchmen of the 1780's.
These Frenchmen found that mesmerism offered a serious
explanation of Nature, of her wonderful, invisible forces,
and even, in some cases, of the forces governing society
and politics. They absorbed mesmerism so thoroughly
that they made it a principal article in the legacy of atti-
tudes that they left for their sons and grandsons to fashion

viii PREFACE

into what is now called romanticism. It is not surprising
that mesmerism's place in this legacy has never been
recognized, for later generations, more squeamish per-
haps about the impure, pseudoscientific sources of their
own views of the world, have managed to forget Mesmer's
commanding position during the last years of the Ancien
Regime. This study would restore him to his rightful
place, somewhere near Turgor, Franklin, and Cagliostro
in the pantheon of that age's most-talked-about men. In
so doing it may help to show how the principles of the
Enlightenment were recast as revolutionary propaganda
and later transformed into elements of nineteenth-century
creeds. It thus may help one to understand how the
Enlightenment ended — not absolutely (for some still
take seriously the Declaration of Independence and the
Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen) — but his-
torically, as a movement characterizing eighteenth-
century France. It may merely help the reader to taste
the flavor of the distant past. But if it achieves this last,
more limited objective, it will have been worthy perhaps
of his attention; for such tastes provide the pleasure in
the study of history.

Much of the pleasure that I have derived from my
own studies I owe to Harry Pitt and Robert Shackleton of
Oxford University. I would also like to record my grati-
tude to those who supported me during the preparation
of this book — the Rhodes Trustees, the Warden and
Fellows of Nuffield College, Oxford, and the Society of
Fellows of Harvard University — and to those who read
it at various stages of its evolution — Richard Cobb,
John Plamenatz, Philip Williams, Crane Brinton, Jonathan
Beecher, and John Hodge. With a hospitality that would
have delighted their ancestor, the original Gallo- American,
the Bergasse du Petit-Thouars family made available to
me not only their papers but also the chateau containing
them.

PREFACE ix

In order to avoid cluttering the page with footnotes,
references have been grouped into long notes, in which
citations are listed according to the order of the quota-
tions' appearance in the text. Impossibly long eighteenth-
century titles have been abbreviated with ellipsis dots.
The places and dates of publication of works are cited
as they appear on title pages, even in the case of such
obvious fictions as "Philadelphia" or "The Moon"; and
where the names of authors and the places and dates of
publication are not given, they are lacking in the original
works. Spelling and punctuation have been modernized,
except in citations of titles. I have done the translating and
have preferred to render "magnetisme animal" (often
shortened to "magnetisme" in the eighteenth century)
as "mesmerism," despite the claim of a modern expert,
who believes that "mesmerisme" was first used in the
early nineteenth century. 1 Actually, the French of the
1780's used it and "magnetisme animal" as synonyms.

Cambridge, Massachusetts Robert Darnton

April 1968

1. H. S. Klickstein, review of Bernhard Milt, Franz Anton Mesmer
und seine Beziehungen zur Schweiz, in Bulletin of the History of Medicine,
XXIX (1955), 187.

CONTENTS

xi

1. Mesmerism and Popular Science 2

2. The Mesmerist Movement 46

3. The Radical Strain in Mesmerism 82

4. Mesmerism as a Radical Political Theory 106

5. From Mesmer to Hugo 126

6. Conclusion 160

Bibliographical Note 171

Appendix 1. Mesmer's Propositions 177
Appendix 2. The Milieu of Amateur Scientists

in Paris 178
Appendix 3. The Societe de l'Harmonie Universelle 180

Appendix 4. Bergasse's Lectures on Mesmerism 183
Appendix 5. The Emblem and Textbook

of the Societes de l'Harmonie 186

Appendix 6. An Antimesmerist View 189
Appendix 7. French Passages Translated

in the Text 193

Index 213

ILLUSTRATIONS

A cartoon satirizing a mesmerist session 5

A favorable view of a mesmerist session 7

Another view of a mesmerist seance 9

A typical cosmology 19

A balloon flight 21

The "elastic shoes" experiment 25
A monster believed to have been captured

in South America 31

A typical plan for flying machines 35

A satirical picture of the amateur scientist 37

The death of Pilatre de Rozier 43

Mesmer 49

A mesmerist charlatan 53

An antimesmerist cartoon 56

The report of the royal commission 63

Nicolas Bergasse 109

All of the illustrations except the last are from the collections
of the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, and are reproduced with
the library's kind permission. The last illustration is from
Louis Bergasse, Un defenseur des principes traditionnels sous la
Revolution, Nicolas Bergasse (Paris, 1910).

The original French for passages translated in the text
may be found in Appendix 7.

MESMERISM

AND THE END OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT IN FRANCE

1. MESMERISM AND POPULAR SCIENCE

MESMERISM AND POPULAR SCIENCE 3

The crashing failure of the Social Contract, Rousseau's
least popular book before the Revolution, 1 raises a prob-
lem for scholars searching for the radical spirit in the
1780's: if the greatest political treatise of the age failed
to interest many literate Frenchmen, what form of radical
ideas did suit their tastes? One such form appeared in the
unlikely guise of animal magnetism or mesmerism.
Mesmerism aroused enormous interest during the pre-
revolutionary decade; and although it originally had no
relevance whatsoever to politics, it became, in the hands
of radical mesmerists like Nicolas Bergasse and Jacques-
Pierre Brissot, a camouflaged political theory very much
like Rousseau's. The mesmerist movement therefore
serves as an example of the way in which, on a vulgar
level, politics became enmeshed with fads, providing
radical writers with a cause that would hold their readers'
attention without awakening that of the censors. To ex-
plain the radical strain in mesmerism, it is necessary to
examine Mesmer's theory in relation to the other interests
of the time, to trace the course of the mesmerist move-
ment, and to consider the character of the mesmerist
societies. It should then be possible to enjoy an un-
expected view of the prerevolutionary radical mentality,
a view freed from the overgrowth of quack pamphlets,
memoirs, and extinct scientific treatises that have kept it
hidden.

In February 1778, Franz Anton Mesmer arrived in
Paris and proclaimed his discovery of a superfine fluid
that penetrated and surrounded all bodies. Mesmer had
not actually seen his fluid; he concluded that it must
exist as the medium of gravity,, since planets could not
attract one another in a vacuum*. While bathing the entire
universe in this primeval "agent of nature," Mesmer

1. Daniel Mornet, "L'Influence de J. -J. Rousseau au XVIIIe siecle,"
Annates de la Societe Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1912, pp. 44-45; Robert
Derathe, "Les refutations du Contrat Social au XVIIIe siecle," ibid.,
1950-1952, pp. 7-12.

4 MESMERISM AND POPULAR SCIENCE

brought it down to earth in order to supply Parisians with
heat, light, electricity, and magnetism; and he especially
extolled its application to medicine. Sickness, he main-
tained, resulted from an "obstacle" to the flow of the fluid
through the body, which was analogous to a magnet.
Individuals could control and reinforce the fluid's action
by "mesmerizing" or massaging the body's "poles" and
thereby overcoming the obstacle, inducing a "crisis,"
often in the form of convulsions, and restoring health or
the "harmony" of man with nature.

What lent strength to this appeal to the eighteenth-
century cult of nature was Mesmer's ability to put his
fluid to work, throwing his patients into epileptic-like
fits or somnambulist trances and curing them of diseases
ranging from blindness to ennui produced by overactive
spleen. Mesmer and his followers put on fascinating
performances: they sat with the patient's knees enclosed
between their own and ran their fingers all over the
patient's body, seeking the poles of the small magnets
that composed the great magnet of the body as a whole.
Mesmerizing required skill, for the small magnets kept
shifting their positions. The best method of establishing
"rapport" with a patient was to rely on stable magnets,
such as those of the fingers and the nose (Mesmer forbade
taking snuff because of the danger of upsetting the nose's
magnetic balance), and to avoid areas like the north
pole at the top of the head, which usually received mes-
meric fluid from the stars, and the south pole in the feet,
which were natural receptors of terrestrial magnetism.
Most mesmerists concentrated on the body's equator at
the hypochondria, on the sides of the upper abdomen,
where Mesmer located the common sensorium. This prac-
tice stimulated gossip about sexual magnetism but not
about hypochondriacs, whose unbalanced humors elic-
ited sympathy, not the scorn reserved for malades imagi-
naires. (The Dictionnaire de YAcademie Frangoise for 1778
explained that the person who suffered from the "vice des

MESMERISM AND POPULAR SCIENCE 5

This contemporary cartoon satirizing a mesmerist session shows
the "tub" dispensing fluid through its movable iron rods and
ropes. The ladies in the center are forming a "chain" or mesmeric
circuit, and those at the sides have passed out from overdoses of
fluid. Other patients grapple for the "poles" of surrounding
bodies, while the mesmerist, depicted by the traditional ass's
head of the charlatan, stirs up the seance by fluid emanating
from his own supercharged body, and astrological beams com-
municate influences from outer space.

6 MESMERISM AND POPULAR SCIENCE

hypocondres" tended to be "bizarre et extravagant" and
upset when left by himself: "Les hypocondriaques sont
melancoliques et visionnaires.") Gossips also found
inspiration in Mesmer' s apparatus, especially his mattress-
lined "crisis room," designed for violent convulsives,
and his famous tubs. These were usually filled with iron
filings and mesmerized water contained in bottles ar-

A favorable view of a mesmerist session, emphasizing its gen-
eral atmosphere of "harmony," the physical and moral accord
of man and the laws of nature. Mesmerists identified harmony
with health and so used music in the treatment of illness. Health,
in the broadest sense of the word, was their supreme value.
Therefore the children in the center are being educated, not
treated for disease: thanks to their early exposure to the "agent
of nature," they may grow up to be natural men. Note the "tub
for the poor" in the back room.

M. Mesmer, doctor of medicine of the faculty of Vienna in Austria,
is the sole inventor of animal magnetism. That method of curing a
multitude of ills (among others, dropsy, paralysis, gout, scurvy,
blindness, accidental deafness) consists in the application of a fluid
or agent that M. Mesmer directs, at times with one of his fingers, at
times with an iron rod that another applies at will, on those who
have recourse to him. He also uses a tub, to which are attached ropes
that the sick tie around themselves, and iron rods, which they place
near the pit of the stomach, the liver, or the spleen, and in general
near the part of their bodies that is diseased. The sick, especially
women, experience convulsions or crises that bring about their cure.
The mesmerizers (they are those to whom Mesmer has revealed his
secret, and they number more than one hundred, including some of
the foremost nobles of the court) apply their hands to the sick part
and rub it for a while. That operation hastens the effect of the ropes
and the rods. There is a tub for the poor every other day. In the ante-
chamber, musicians play tunes likely to make the sick cheerful. Arriv-
ing at the home of this famous doctor, one sees a crowd of men and
women of every age and state, the cordon bleu, the artisan, the doc-
tor, the surgeon. It is a spectacle worthy of sensitive souls to see^
men distinguished by their birth and their position in society mes-
merize with gentle solicitude children, old people, and especially
the indigent.

MESMERISM AND POPULAR SCIENCE 7

8 MESMERISM AND POPULAR SCIENCE

ranged like the spokes of a wheel. They stored the fluid
and transmitted it through movable iron rods, which the
patients applied to their sick areas. Sitting around the tubs
in circles, the patients communicated the fluid to one
another by means of a rope looped about them all and by
linking thumbs and index fingers in order to form a mes-
meric "chain," something like an electric circuit. Mesmer
provided portable tubs for patients who wanted to take
mesmeric "baths" in the privacy of their homes, but he
generally recommended communal treatments, where
each individual reinforced the fluid and sent it coursing
with extraordinary power through entire clinics. In his
outdoor treatments, Mesmer usually mesmerized trees
and then attached groups of patients to them by ropes ir\
daisy-chain fashion, always avoiding knots, which created
obstacles to the fluid's harmony. Everything in Mesmer' s
indoor clinic was designed to produce a crisis in the
patient. Heavy carpets, weird, astrological wall-decora-
tions, and drawn curtains shut him off from the outside
world and muffled the occasional words, screams, and
bursts of hysterical laughter that broke the habitual heavy
silence. Shafts of fluid struck him constantly in the
sombre light reflected by strategically placed mirrors.
Soft music, played on wind instruments, a pianoforte, or
the glass "harmonica" that Mesmer helped to introduce in
France, sent reinforced waves of fluid deep into his soul.
Every so often fellow patients collapsed, writhing on the
floor, and were carried by Antoine, the mesmerist-valet,
into the crisis room; and if his spine still failed to tingle,
his hands to tremble, his hypochondria to quiver, Mesmer
himself would approach, dressed in a lilac taffeta robe, and
drill fluid into the patient from his hands, his imperial
eye, and his mesmerized wand. Not all crises took violent
form. Some developed into deep sleeps, and some sleeps
provided communication with dead or distant spirits,
who sent messages by way of the fluid directly to the
somnambulist's internal sixth sense, which was extra-

Another view of a mesmerist seance, which communicates
something of mesmerism's stylish, overheated sensiblerie. The
lady on the right is being overcome with a "crisis/' The lady
in the background has been seized with convulsions and is
being carried into the mattress-lined "crisis room."

MESMERISM AND POPULAR SCIENCE

ordinarily receptive to what would now be called extra-
sensory perceptions. Many hundreds of Frenchmen
experienced such marvels, but few if any fully under-
stood them, for Mesmer always kept his greatest doctrinal
secrets to himself. 2

Extravagant as it seems today, mesmerism has not
warranted the neglect of historians, for it corresponded
perfectly to the interests of literate Frenchmen in the
1780's. Science had captivated Mesmer's contemporaries
by revealing to them that they were surrounded by won-
derful, invisible forces: Newton's gravity, made intelli-
gible by Voltaire; Franklin's electricity, popularized by a
fad for lightning rods and by demonstrations in the
fashionable lyceums and museums of Paris; and the
miraculous gases of the Charlieres and Montgolfieres
that astonished Europe by lifting man into the air for
the first time in 1783. Mesmer's invisible fluid seemed no
more miraculous, and who could say that it was less real
than the phlogiston that Lavoisier was attempting to
banish from the universe, or the caloric he was apparently
substituting for it, or the ether, the "animal heat," the
"inner mold," the "organic molecules," the fire soul,
and the other fictitious powers that one meets like ghosts

2. Some of Mesmer's 27 basic propositions of animal magnetism
are reproduced in Appendix 1. The best of the numerous contemporary
pamphlets explaining the theory and practice of mesmerism are: F. A.
Mesmer, Memoire sur la decouverte du magnetisme animal (Geneva,
1779); Aphorismes de M. Mesmer, dictes a I'assemblee de ses eleves . . .
(published by Caullet de Veaumorel, Paris, 1785); the series of letters
by Galart de Montjoie, a student of Mesmer's first important disciple,
Charles Deslon, in the Journal de Paris, February and March 1784 (esp.
issue of Feb. 16, pp. 209-216). For examples of the occult tendencies
of mesmerism, see A. M. J. de Chastenet, Marquis de Puysegur, Memoires
pour servir a I'histoire et a I'etablissement du magnetisme animal (1784);
Tardy de Montravel, Essai sur la theorie du somnambulisme magnetique
(London, 1785), which supplied the basis of the somnambulist visions
Tardy recounted in hundreds of pages of later pamphlets; J.-H.-D.
Petetin, Memoire sur la decouverte des phenomenes que presentent la
catalepsie et le somnambulisme . . . (1787), and Extrait des registres de la
Societe de I'Harmonie de France du 4 janvier 1787.

MESMERISM AND POPULAR SCIENCE

inhabiting the dead treatises of such respectable eigh-
teenth-century scientists as Bailly, Buffon, Euler, La Place,
and Macquer. Frenchmen could read descriptions of fluids
very like Mesmer's under the articles "fire" and "elec-
tricity" in the Encyclopedic. If they desired inspiration
from a still greater authority, they could read Newton's
description of the "most subtle spirit which pervades and
lies hid in all gross bodies" in the fantastic last para-
graph of his Principia (1713 edition) or in the later queries
of his Opticks. 3

Not only did the century's greatest scientist speculate
extravagantly about mystical Powers and Virtues that his
readers might associate later with mesmeric fluid, but he
showed great interest in an occult doctor called Bory
("I think he usually goes clothed in green" 4 ), who might
have been an early incarnation of Mesmer. Berkeley, one
of Newton's first opponents, had his own concept of a
vitalistic fluid, which, when distilled by evergreen trees,
produced a tar water that would cure all diseases. In fact,
there were enough fluids, sponsored by enough philos-
ophers, to make any eighteenth-century reader's head
swim. It was a century of "systems" as well as one of
empiricism and experimentation. "Scientists," often
clergymen, pursued "science," often known simply as
philosophy, up the Great Chain of Being until it took

3. A letter from A.-J.-M. Servan, undated and unaddressed, in the
Bibliotheque municipale, Grenoble, ms N 1761, illustrates how the
speculations in Newton's Opticks, which were restrained in comparison
with those in his correspondence with Robert Boyle, took hold of the
mesmerists: "Pourquoi ne pas revenir tout de suite a la belle conjecture
que Newton a developpee dans l'un de ses ouvrages? II avoue l'existence
d'un milieu beaucoup plus subtil que l'air et qui penetre les corps les
plus denses, milieu qui, par le ressort de toutes ses parties et les vibra-
tions qui en resultent, est l'instrument des phenomenes les plus singu-
liers de la nature, du feu, de I'electricite, de nos sensations meme etc."
For the works on eighteenth-century science to which this account is
indebted, see the bibliographical note.

4. Newton to Francis Aston, May 18, 1669, quoted in L. T. More,
Isaac Newton: A Biography (New York, 1934), p. 51.

MESMERISM AND POPULAR SCIENCE

them beyond physics to meta-physics and the Supreme
Being. The Abbe Pluche, one of the most famous of
science's pious primitives, did not have to understand the
law of gravity to explain the tides: he went straight to
the teleological cause — God's desire to help ships in and
out of harbors. Newton's own scientific labors included
the study of alchemy, the Book of Revelation, and the
works of Jacob Boehme. His readers rarely had so firm a
grip on what would now be considered scientific method
that they could cut the mysticism out of his theories of
light and gravity. They often regarded gravity as an
occult power, perhaps a relative of the universe's electric
soul or of the vitalistic fire that burned in the heart, ac-
cording to Harvey and Descartes, and that was produced
by the friction of blood against arteries, according to more
modern theorists. Until Lavoisier laid the foundations of
modern chemistry, scientists usually expected to explain
all life processes by a few principles; and once they be-
lieved they had found the key to the code of nature, they
often lapsed lyrically into fiction. Buffon's style has not
killed his reputation as a scientist, but Bernardin de
Saint-Pierre (who explained that nature divided melons
into sections so that they could be eaten en famille) now
lives only as a figure in the history of literature, although
he was also a scientist to eighteenth-century Frenchmen.
They read facts where their descendants read fiction.

The progressive divorce of science from theology in
the eighteenth century did not free science from fiction,
because scientists had to call upon the imagination to
make sense of, and often to see, the data revealed by their
microscopes, telescopes, Leyden jars, fossil hunts, and
dissections. That the eye alone could not decode nature
seemed clear from scientific observations of mermaids
and little men talking in rocks; and that machines need
not improve perception followed from reports of fully
developed donkeys seen through microscopes in donkey
semen. Francois de Plantade's famous drawing of a little

MESMERISM AND POPULAR SCIENCE

man whom he claimed to have seen in human sperm
under a microscope was debated seriously in the first
half of the century. Although it was a hoax, it seemed
reasonable in terms of preformation theory and no more
ridiculous than Charles Bonnet's concept of the encase-
ment (emboitement) of all individuals in the primeval
parent. Epigenesis was not proven until 1828, and until
then a veil of fanciful theory hid the reproductive pro-
cesses of mammals from the scientists' strained sight.

By the end of the century, a legal dictionary permitted
itself some doubts about the bastardy case in which a
woman claimed to have conceived a child by her hus-
band, whom she had not seen for four years, during a
dream. "It is supposed that the night of the lady of
Aiguemerre's dream was a summer night, that her win-
dow was open, her bed exposed to the West, her blanket
disarranged, and that the southwest wind, duly impreg-
nated with organic molecules of human fetuses, of
floating embryos, fertilized her." 5 But not everyone
dared deny the power of the maternal imagination: what
produced the child with the beef-kidney head, if not the
images in its mother's mind during the cravings of
pregnancy? Linnaeus even illustrated an ejaculation of
semen from a pollen grain that he had observed with a
microscope, and he went on to explain plant life by
reference to a subtle, magnetized fluid and human
physiology. Yet he had only seen plants sleep. Erasmus
Darwin detected them breathing, moving their muscles
voluntarily, and experiencing mother love. Meanwhile,
other scientists were watching rocks grow, clams sprout,
and the earth secrete many hybrid forms of life. They saw
a different world from the one we see today, and they
made it out as best they could with the collection of
animistic, vitalistic, and mechanistic theories that they

5. Prost de Royer, Dictionnaire de jurisprudence et des arrets, 7 vols.
(Lyons, 1781-1788), II, 74. The Dictionnaire enthusiastically endorsed
mesmerism (V, 226-227).

MESMERISM AND POPULAR SCIENCE

had inherited from their predecessors. As Buffon recom-
mended, they saw with 'Toeil de 1'esprit," but it was
"l'esprit de systeme."

Of the many systems for bringing the world into
focus, mesmerism had most in common with the vitalistic
theories that had multiplied since the time of Paracelsus.
Indeed, Mesmer's opponents spotted his scientific an-
cestry almost immediately. They showed that, far from
revealing any new discoveries or ideas, his system
descended directly from those of Paracelsus, J. B. van
Helmont, Robert Fludd, and William Maxwell, who
presented health as a state of harmony between the
individual microcosm and the celestial macrocosm,
involving fluids, human magnets, and occult influences
of all sorts. Mesmer's theory, however, also seemed
related to the cosmologies of respectable writers who
sponsored a variety of fluids, which they sent swirling
through the universe under familiar names like gravity,
light, fire, and electricity. Von Humboldt thought the
moon might exert a magnetic force, and Galvani was
experimenting with "animal electricity" in Italy at the
same time that Mesmer used animal magnetism to cure
hundreds of persons in France. Meanwhile, the Abbe
Nollet and Bertholon and others had discovered mirac-
ulous powers in the universal electric fluid. Some sci-
entists reported that electric charges made plants grow
faster and that electric eels cured gout. (After being
thrown daily into a tub of water containing a large elec-
tric eel, a boy recovered from an irregularity in the use
of his limbs. The experimenters did not record whatever
shocks his psyche received.) Mesmer's own cures, pub-
lished with elaborate testimonials, spoke more eloquently
for his system than his brief and cryptic publications. He
was not, after all, a man of theory (his French disciples
took care of the system-building), but an explorer who had
embarked on uncharted seas of fluid and returned with
the elixir of life. Some detected a note of charlatanism in

MESMERISM AND POPULAR SCIENCE

Mesmer's treatments, but his apparatus resembled the
all-popular Leyden jar and the machines illustrated in
standard works on electricity, like Nollet's L'Art des
experiences ou avis aux amateurs de la physique (1770).
These amateurs often sent electrical charges through
"chains" of persons like Mesmer's and often regarded
electricity as a magic potion that would conquer disease
and even (as among the clientele of Dr. James Graham's
fertility bed in London) help to create life. Moreover,
the alliance between charlatanism and conventional
medicine had been exposed so often on the French stage
that any admirer of Moliere might consider Mesmer's
techniques less lethal than those of orthodox doctors
and barber-surgeons, secure in their faith in the four
humors and the animal spirits, and formidable in their
arsenal of remedies: purgatives, cauteries, resolutives,
evacuants, humectants, vesicatories, and derivative,
revulsive, and spoliative bleeding. 6

To argue that mesmerism did not seem absurd in the
context of eighteenth-century science is not to claim that
scientific thought from Newton to Lavoisier was a collec-
tion of fictions. At the popular level, however, it entangled
the ordinary reader in a jungle of exotic systemes du monde.
How was he to separate fiction from truth, especially
among the monisms that made up the biological sciences?
The heirs of the seventeenth-century mathematical and
mechanical philosophers failed to give successful expla-
nations of processes like respiration and reproduction,
and the forebears of nineteenth-century romantics, al-

6. For contemporary views of the eighteenth century's semimedieval
medicine men — who still dealt in "butter of arsenic," had generally
fought against the recent practice of inoculation, and swore by bleeding
as a preparative measure for childbirth — see J. F. Fournel, Remontrances
des malades aux medecins de la faculte de Paris (Amsterdam, 1785), and
Observations tres-importantes sur les effets du magnetisme animal par
M. de Bourzeis . . . (Paris, 1783). For a thorough, contemporary analysis
of the sources of mesmerism, see M.-A. Thouret, Rech.erch.es et doutes
sur le magnetisme animal (Paris, 1784).

MESMERISM AND POPULAR SCIENCE

though they speculated stirringly about incalculable inner
life-forces, failed also. Mechanists and vitalists com-
monly disguised their failures in fantastic fluids, but as
these were invisible, they could be tailored to fit any
system, and some penetrating observers felt distressed
at the spectacle of general nudity. Joseph Priestley, the
greatest defender of invisible, fluid phlogiston, remarked
about the general fascination with electricity, "Here the
imagination may have full play, in conceiving of the man-
ner in which an invisible agent produces an almost
infinite variety of visible effects. As the agent is invisible,
every philosopher is at liberty to make it whatever he
pleases/ 7 Lavoisier noted the same trend among chemists:
"It is with things that one can neither see nor feel that
it is important to guard against flights of imagination." 7
No such scruples restrained the ardor of amateur scientists
and others seeking the newest frontier of Enlightenment.
They had been living comfortably with electricity, mag-
netism, and gravity for generations, but the invisible gases
of chemistry had begun to enter their universe only with
the great discoveries of the second half of the century.
Joseph Black reported finding "fixed air" (carbon dioxide)
in 1755; and during the next thirty years, other scientists,
notably Henry Cavendish and Joseph Priestley, dizzied
their contemporaries by discovering "inflammable" or
"phlogisticated" air (hydrogen), "vital" or "dephlogisti-
cated" air (oxygen), and many other wonders that had
been floating about in the common air for centuries,
unknown to Aristotle and all his successors. The man-in-
the-salon's difficulty in assimilating these gases into his
view of the world can be judged by an article in the
Journal de Paris of April 30, 1784, reporting one of the La-
voisier experiments now known to have given the death-
blow to the four-element theory. Since the beginning

7. Joseph Priestley, The History and Present State of Electricity with
Original Experiments (London, 1775), II, 16; A. L. Lavoisier, Traite elemen-
taire de chirnie, presente dans un ordre nouveau, et d'apres les decouvertes
modcmes, 3 ed. (Paris, 1801; 1 ed., 1789), I, 7.

MESMERISM AND POPULAR SCIENCE 17

of philosophy, men had agreed that water was one of the
four basic elements, the journal remarked, but Lavoisier
and Meusnier had just shown the Academy of Sciences
that it was a compound of inflammable and dephlogisti-
cated air. "It must have cost dearly to accept that water
was not water but actually air," it said, and concluded,
"We have one less element."

The discovery of these gases cost the journal's readers
dearly because it meant the abandonment of a venerable
and reasonable way of looking at the world. Their confu-
sion grew as scientists not only seemed to subtract from
the Aristotelian elements but also added elements of their
own — the vital and dephlogisticated airs as well as the
salt, sulphur, mercury, and other "principles" that had
accumulated since the time of Paracelsus. The scientists
themselves shared in this confusion and called for a "new
Paracelsus" to create a "transcendant," "general, philo-
sophical chemistry," but they left the laymen only more
bewildered by rushing in with cosmologies to fill the vac-
uums that their discoveries had created. To increase the
confusion, the invisible forces clashing in the void
produced repercussions among the reputations that
collided in salons and academies; and the attempt of the
academies to direct traffic through the unknown exposed
them to charges of unenlightened despotism, while new
scientific fantasies appeared faster than they could build
detours around the old. "Never have so many systems,
so many new theories of the universe, appeared as during
the last few years," the journal de Physique remarked
wearily in December 1781, adding that they were mutually
contradictory. 8

8. Article "chimie" by G.-F. Venel in the Encyclopedic on Diction-
naire raisonne des sciences, des arts et des metiers, 1 ed. (Paris, 1751-1780),
III, 409-410; Journal de Physique, December 1781, p. 503. In The Edge of
Objectivity: An Essay in the History of Scientific Ideas (Princeton, 1960),
p. 184, C. C. Gillispie cites Venel's article as an example of a "romantic"
reaction among eighteenth-century scientists, especially biologists,
to the rational, mathematical physics of the seventeenth century.

MESMERISM AND POPULAR SCIENCE

A glance at the scientific periodicals of the time shows
the profusion of cosmologies at a popular level. One man
claims to have explained the secret of life by a vitalistic
"vegetative force"; a second, announcing a new kind of
motionless astronomy, says he has found "the key to all
the sciences, which the finest minds of all nations have
sought in vain for such a long time"; a third fills Newton's
void with an invisible "universal agent," which holds
the cosmos together; a fourth overturns the "idol" of
gravity by explaining that Newton got it backward —
combustion from the sun really repels the planets; and
as for Newton's ether, an electrified, "animal" version
of it courses through our bodies, determining the color
of our skin, according to a fifth. Even literary periodicals
mixed science and fiction. The Annee litteraire, for exam-
ple, published an attack on mesmerism that was based
on a rival theory of "igneous atoms," "universal fluid,"
and the following physiology: "In man and animals,
lungs are an electric machine, which, by their continual
movement, separate air from fire; the latter insinuates
itself in the blood and moves by this means to the brain,
which distributes it, impels it and forms it into animal
spirits, which circulate in the nerves, providing all
voluntary and involuntary movement." 9 These ideas
did not spring from sheer fancy; they were related to
those of Stahl, Boerhaave, and even Lavoisier.

The barrage of theories naturally left the reading
public confused — confused, but not discouraged, for
these invisible forces sometimes performed miracles.
One of those gases carried Pilatre de Rozier into the air
over Metz on October 15, 1783, and the news of man's
first flight struck the imaginations of Frenchmen in a wave
of enthusiasm for science. Women wore "chapeaux au
ballon," children ate "dragees au ballon," poets com-

9. Mercure de France, January 24, 1784, p. 166, and November 20,
1784, p. 142; Journal de Physique, September 1781, pp. 247-248, October
1781, p. 268 (continuing an article in the September issue, pp. 192-
199), and September 1781, p. 176; Annee litteraire, I (1785), 279-280.

MESMERISM AND POPULAR SCIENCE 19

■ -■ — - ■> ■ ~ • ;

A typical cosmology, as illustrated at the end of J.-L. Carra,
Nouveaux principes de physique (Paris, 1781), vol. I. A key to the
illustration explained Carra's fantasy as follows: "A. center of
this universe, great pendulum of the universal mechanism;
B.B.B. parallel zones; C.C.C. collateral zones; D.D.D. general
systems, composed of a great number of stars or of suns; e.e.e.
exatoms [gigantic celestial bodies] governing the general sys-
tems; f.f.f.f. envelope of this universe; g.g.g.g. surrounding
chaos/' The diagonal of e's, which is difficult to identify, runs
from upper left to lower right.

MESMERISM AND POPULAR SCIENCE

posed countless odes to balloon flights, engineers wrote
dozens of treatises on the construction and direction of
balloons for prizes sponsored by the Academy of Sciences.
Heroes ventured into balloons in towns throughout the
country, and admirers recorded the smallest details of
their flights, for these were great moments in history.
The returning "aeronautes" were paraded through towns.
Boys fought to hold the bridles of their horses; workmen
kissed their clothing; and their portraits, with appropriate
laudatory verse, were printed and sold in the streets.
Judging from contemporary accounts of their trips, one
feels the enthusiasm must have equaled at least the
excitement over Lindberg's flight and the first ventures
into space: "It is impossible to describe that moment:
the women in tears, the common people raising their
hands toward the sky in deep silence; the passengers,
leaning out of the gallery, waving and crying out in
joy . . . you follow them with your eyes, you call to them
as if they could hear, and the feeling of fright gives way
to one of wonder. No one said anything but, 'Great God,
how beautiful!' Grand military music began to play and
firecrackers proclaimed their glory/' 10

10. Journal de Bruxelles, January 31, 1784, pp. 226-227. Almost all
journals of 1784 printed similar descriptions of the flights, including
many rapturous accounts by the balloonists of the sensations of flying
and of man's first bird's-eye-views of towns and countryside. Pilatre
de Rozier's report, published in Journal de Bruxelles, July 31, 1784,
pp. 223-229, is a good example.

A balloon flight at Lyons in January 1784. The poem expresses
the widespread conviction that science had made man almost
a god, because it demonstrated the ability of his reason to under-
stand and to command the laws of nature. The last line reads,
"And the feeble mortal can approach the gods."

Aerostatic experiment made at Lyons in January 1784 with a balloon
100 feet in diameter. View from the southern Pavilion of Sr. Antonio
Spreafico, aux Brotteaux. An infinite space separated us from the
skies;IBut, thanks to the Montgolfiers, whom genius inspires, /The
eagle of Jupiter has lost his empire,! And the feeble mortal can ap-
proach the gods.

MESMERISM AND POPULAR SCIENCE

The enthusiasm for balloon flights drove home the
importance of science for ordinary Frenchmen in a way
that Lavoisier's reports to the Academy of Sciences could
never have done. One hundred thousand weeping,
cheering, fainting spectators reportedly watched a flight
at Nantes. When a flight at Bordeaux was canceled, the
crowd rioted, killing two men and destroying the balloon
and the ticket house. "They were laborers who were
angry at having lost a day's work without having seen
anything," the Journal de Bruxelles explained. Thus the
flights reached audiences full of men who could not read
the Journal de Physique. A group of peasants, for example,
reportedly greeted a balloon landing in a field by shout-
ing, "Are you men or gods?" And at the other extreme of
French society, a well-born balloon enthusiast imagined
seeing "the gods of antiquity carried on clouds; myths
have come to life in the marvels of physics." Science had
made man a god. The scientist's ability to harness the
forces of nature had inspired the French with awe, with
an almost religious enthusiasm, which spread beyond the
scientific bodies of Paris, beyond the limits of literacy,
and, as far as literary matters went, beyond the bound-
aries of prose. Thus one of the dozens of poems, inspired
by the balloon flights, on the nobility of man's reason:

Tes tubes ont de lair determine le poids;
Ton prisme a divise les rayons de la lumiere;
Le feu, la terre et Veau soumis a tes lois:
Tu domptes la nature entiere.

Science had opened limitless vistas of human progress:
"The incredible discoveries that have multiplied during
the last ten years . . . the phenomena of electricity
fathomed, the elements transformed, the airs decom-
posed and understood, the rays of the sun condensed,
air traversed by human audacity, a thousand other
phenomena have prodigiously extended the sphere of

MESMERISM AND POPULAR SCIENCE

our knowledge. Who knows how far we can go? What
mortal would dare set limits to the human mind . . . ?" n
It seems safe, therefore, to draw one conclusion from
the pulp literature of the 1780's: the reading public of
that era was intoxicated with the power of science, and
it was bewildered by the real and imaginary forces with
which scientists peopled the universe. Because the public
could not distinguish the real from the imaginary, it
seized on any invisible fluid, any scientific-sounding
hypothesis, that promised to explain the wonders of
nature.

A hoax about the invention of "elastic shoes" laid
bare these attitudes in 1783. On December 8, the Journal
de Paris printed a letter from a watchmaker, "D . . . ,"
announcing the discovery of a new principle, based on
ricochets, that would enable man to walk on water.
D . . . promised to walk across the Seine on New Year's
Day in a special pair of shoes he had invented, if a sub-
scription of 200 louis were to await his arrival near th$
Pont Neuf. Within a week the journal had collected 3,243
livres from some of the most prominent men in the
country, including Lafayette, who gave one of the largest
contributions. The burst of enthusiasm for the project,
the imposing names on the list of subscribers, and the

11. Journal de Bruxelles, May 29, 1784, pp. 226-227 (on the Bordeaux
riot, see also Courier de I'Europe [London], May 28, 1784, p. 340; and July
20, 1784, p. 43, for a report of a similar riot in Paris); Courier de I'Europe,
August 24, 1784, p. 128; he Journal des Scavans, January 1784, p. 27;
Almanack des Muses (Paris, 1785), p. 51; Traces du magnetisme (The
Hague, 1784), p. 4. The poem from the Almanack des Muses may be
translated literally as follows: "Your tubes have determined the weight
of the air;/Your prism has divided the rays of light;/Fire, earth and
water subject to your laws:/You dominate all of nature." The Courier
de I'Europe, July 9, 1784, p. 23, described the flight of the balloon Le
Suffrein from Nantes as follows: "Cent mille ames, au moins, assisterent
au depart du Suffrein: plusieurs femmes s'evanouirent, d'autres fon-
daient en larmes; tout le monde etait dans une agitation inexprimable.
Le retour de ces deux voyageurs . . . fut celebre comme un jour de
triomphe . . . les routes etaient bordees de monde ... la plupart des
maisons illuminees. Les gens du peuple baisaient leurs mains, leurs
habits . . ."

MESMERISM AND POPULAR SCIENCE

lack of precautions taken by the journal pointed to the
same attitude. Man had just conquered the air; why
could he not walk on water? What limits could be set to
the invisible powers at the command of his reason? The
hoax was exposed by the end of December. The journal
converted the funds into a charity drive, and by Feb-
ruary 7 it had overcome its embarrassment well enough
to print a letter promoting a technique for seeing in the
dark, which was sponsored by a club of balloon enthu-
siasts convinced of the brotherhood of "nyctalopes,
hydrophobes, somnambulists and water witchers." 12
L.-S. Merrier described the spirit of his contempo-
raries with his usual insight while reporting a sub-
scription for a new kind of flying machine. "Love of the
marvelous always conquers us, because, sensing con-
fusedly how little we know of the forces of nature, we
ecstatically welcome anything that leads us to discoveries
about them." He found that Parisians' passion for science
had overcome their old interest in letters, and J.-H.
Meister, another perceptive commentator on Parisian
fashions, concurred. "In all of our gatherings, at all our
suppers, at the toilettes of our lovely women as in our
academic lyceums, we talk of nothing but experiments,
atmospheric air, inflammable gas, flying chariots, journeys
in the air." Parisians flocked to public lecture courses
on science, which were advertised in the newspapers,
and scrambled for membership in the scientific lyceums
and museums established by Pilatre de Rozier, Condorcet,
Court de Gebelin, and La Blancherie. The excitement
that animated these adult education courses can be judged
from a letter from a provincial gentleman to his friends at
home on the latest vogues in Paris (see Appendix II);
and the tone of the lectures can be appreciated from an
article in a journal published by the Museum of La

12. Journal de Paris, December 8-26, 1783, pp. 1403-1484, and
February 7, 1784, pp. 169-170.

MESMERISM AND POPULAR SCIENCE 25

An artist's version of the "elastic shoes" experiment. Like most
hoaxes, the experiment laid bare contemporary attitudes; in
this case, the belief that scientific progress meant that man could
do anything — fly, walk on water, cure all disease.

View of the crossing of the river Seine on dry feet beneath the Pont
Neuf by means of elastic shoes. Dedicated to the subscribers.

MESMERISM AND POPULAR SCIENCE

Blancherie: "Ever since a predilection for science began
to spread among us, we have seen the public occupied
successively with physics, natural history, and chemistry;
seen it not only concerned with their progress, but actually
devoted to their study; the public swarms into courses
where they are taught, it rushes to read books about them,
and it welcomes avidly everything that brings them to
mind; there are but few rich persons in whose homes one
cannot find the instruments suitable for these useful
sciences." 13

The enthusiasm of amateur scientists permeated the
periodicals of the 1780's and warmed the hearts of dedi-
cated experimenters like Joseph Priestley, who observed
that electrical demonstrations had become enormously
fashionable and who then fed the fashion by publishing
dozens of do-it-yourself experiments, designed purely
for entertainment. Priestley's less eminent French counter-
part, the Abbe J. A. Nollet, who championed a theory of
electricity that somewhat resembled Mesmer's fluid,
wrote several such manuals for amateurs, and publica-
tions like the Journal de Physique reviewed many similar
works aimed at what must have been an extensive reader-
ship of home scientists. Amateurs playing with sulphur
and electricity could hope to stumble upon some discovery
like the one announced in the Journal de Paris of May 11,
1784, by J.-L. Carra, the future Girondist leader. Journals
snatched at such reports from their readers "especially
these days, when one searches eagerly for everything

13. L.-S. Merrier, Tableau de Paris, 12 vols. (Amsterdam, 1782-
1788), II, 300; also XI, 18: "Le regne des lettres est passe; les physiciens
remplacent les poetes et les romanciers; la machine electrique tient
lieu d'une piece de theatre." Meister's remark is in Correspondance
litteraire, philosophique et critique par Grimm, Diderot, Raynal, Meister,
etc., ed. Maurice Tourneux (Paris, 1880), XIII, 344 (cited henceforth as
Grimm's Correspondance litteraire). The account of La Blancherie's
Musee is in Nouvelles de la Republique des lettres, October 12, 1785. The
enthusiasm for the lycees and musees of Paris can be documented from
numerous articles in Memoires secrets pour servir a I'histoire de la republi-
que des lettres en France, as well as other publications.

MESMERISM AND POPULAR SCIENCE

connected with some discovery," as the Journal de Bruxelles
put it. As if to illustrate its remark, the journal published
excited accounts of discoveries like the "styptic water"
that, according to the habitues of the Cafe du Caveau of
Paris, stopped all hemorrhages. Not to be outdone by its
competitor, the Courier de I'Europe published a report
of a Parisian who claimed to cure all ills with a mixture
of bread and opium, a prescription that held out hope for
the readers of the Journal de Physique, who had been
warned that their cooking utensils were probably poison-
ous. Judging from their letters-to-the-editor, the readers
of these periodicals believed science could do anything.
A certain M. d'Audouard of Marseilles notified the Courier
de I'Europe of the invention of a perpetual motion machine
that would grind grain on its own power forever, and a
seven-year-old boy who had confided his bed-wetting
problems to the Journal de Paris was advised to give him-
self periodic electric shocks. An old-fashioned literary
type complained to the Annee litteraire that "this scientific
mania" had gone too far. "For literature one has but a cold
esteem bordering on indifference, while the sciences . . .
excite a universal enthusiasm. Physics, chemistry, natural
history have become a craze." 14

Amateur science provided amusement, if nothing
else. Scientist-magicians like Joseph Pinetti toured the
country performing "amusing physics and various

14. Priestley, The History and Present State of Electricity, II, 134-
138, and passim; journal de Bruxelles, January 10, 1784, p. 81, and March 6,
1784, p. 39 (see also May 15, 1784, p. 139); Courier de I'Europe, October 8,
1784, p. 228; Journal de Physique, July 1781, p. 80; Courier de I'Europe,
August 27, 1784, p. 135; Journal de Paris, April 23, 1784, p. 501, and April
27, 1784, pp. 516-517; Annee litteraire I (1785), 5, 8. Mallet du Pan put
mesmerism in its proper context while reporting on its enormous
popularity in his Journal historique et politique (Geneva), February 14,
1784, p. 321: "Les arts, les sciences, tout fourmille aujourd'hui d'inven-
tions, de prodiges, de talents surnaturels. Une foule de gens de tout
etat, qui ne s'etaient jamais doute d'etre chimistes, geometres, mecani-
ciens etc. etc. etc. se presentent journellement avec des merveilles de
toute espece."

MESMERISM AND POPULAR SCIENCE

entertaining experiments." A certain M. de Kempelen
delighted Parisians in the summer of 1784 by exhibiting
his scientific wonder, the chess-playing robot. The "tetes
parlantes" (talking heads) of the Abbe Mical elicited a
serious investigation by the Academy of Sciences and a
rapturous letter in the Mercure by Mallet du Pan about
the new science of creating speech, the "thousand mar-
vels" of science in general, and Parisians' "general
frenzy about experiments regarded as supernatural."
Henri Decremps, who called himself a "professor and
demonstrator of amusing physics," capitalized on this
attitude in a series of popular scientific books that were,
in effect, manuals for magicians. He treated dozens of
tricks like the dancing egg that jumps out of a hat and the
mechanical singing bird as "a simple problem of physics
or mathematics" and analyzed the current scientific fads
just as Priestley and Lavoisier had done: "When visible,
striking phenomena depend upon an imperceptible and
unknown cause, the human mind, ever inclined toward
the marvelous, naturally attributes these effects to a
chimerical cause." The popular faith in scientific marvels
also expressed itself in plays like L' Amour physicien, per-
formed at the Ambigu-Comique on January 1, 1784, and
Lc ballon ou la Physico-manie, which opened at the Varietes
Amusantes later that year, and even in science fiction
novels like Aventures singulieres d'un voyageur aerien;
Le retour de mon pauvre oncle, ou relation de son voyage
dans la lune; Baby-Bambon, histoire ar chime rve ill euse; and
Nouvelles du monde lunaire. The fiction may not have
seemed too extravagant, for Pilatre de Rozier had boasted
that he could fly in his balloon from Calais to Boston in
two days, if the winds were right. Popular science even
found its way into love letters, at least in the case of
Linguet's mistress, who asked him not to send her light
verse, "because I only like poems when they are dressed
up in a bit of physics or metaphysics." A kindred spirit,
the future Girondist leader C. J. M. Barbaroux, found that

MESMERISM AND POPULAR SCIENCE

only poetry could express the excitement of his experi-
ments with electricity:

O feu subtil, ame du monde,
Bienfaisante electricite
Tu remplis I' air, la terre, Yonde,
Le ciel et son immensite . 15

This was the spirit of the time in which Condorcet, then
secretary of the Academy of Sciences, nurtured his vision
of human progress. The reports of experiments, gadgets,
and scientific debates crammed into publications ranging
from the cautious journal de Paris to the clandestine
bulletins a la main give the impression that the golden
age of popular science occurred in prerevolutionary
France, rather than in nineteenth- or twentieth-century
America.

So strong was the popular enthusiasm for science in
the 1780's that it almost erased the line (never very clear
until the nineteenth century) dividing science from
pseudoscience. The government and the learned societies,
which attempted to hold that line against the incursions

15. Mercure, July 3, 1784, p. 45, and July 24, 1784, p. 177; Henri
Decremps, La magie blanche devoilee, on explication des tours surprenants,
qui font depuis peu I' admiration de la capitate et de la province, avec des
reflexions sur la baguette divinatoire, les automates joueurs d'echecs etc. etc.
(Paris, 1784), pp. xi, 72. The letter to Linguet is cited in Jean Cruppi,
Un avocat journaliste au XVllle siecle: Linguet (Paris, 1895), p.. 307. Bar-
baroux's poem is in Memoires inedits de Petion et memoires de Buzot & de
Barbaroux . . . ed. C. A. Dauban (Paris, 1866), p. 264. Translated literally,
it goes: '/Oh subtle fire, soul of the world,/Beneficent electricity/You
fill the air, the earth, the sea, /The sky and its immensity." See also
Decremps' Supplement a la Magie blanche devoilee (Paris, 1785), pp. 281-
282, which described the character of the modern charlatan: "II se vante
ordinairement d'avoir decouvert de nouvelles lois dans la nature incon-
nues jusqu'a lui; mais il s'en reserve toujours le secret, en assurant que
ses connaissances sont du ressort de la physique occulte ... II pretend
d'etre plus eclaire que toutes les societes savantes." Decremps pursued
his attacks on popular "magic" scientists in Testament de Jerome Sharp,
professeur de physique amusante (Paris, 1789) and Codicile de Jerome Sharp
(Paris, 1791).

MESMERISM AND POPULAR SCIENCE

of quacks and charlatans, condemned Mesmer but gave
their blessing to Nicolas le Dm, a sort of vaudevillian from
the Foire Saint-Germain, who propounded a theory of a
universal fluid like Mesmer's and established a magnetic
treatment for the sick in the Couvent des Celestins.
Imposing apparatus and theories inspired faith in several
projects like the elastic shoes. A certain Bottineau, for

A monster believed to have been captured in South America.
This cartoon and others like it were sold widely in the streets
of Paris. The reports of monsters were taken seriously by some
newspapers and did not seem too absurd in the light of eigh-
teenth-century theories of sexual generation and the cross-
breeding of species.

Description of this unique monster seizing its prey. This monster
was found in the kingdom of Santa Fe, Peru, in the province of Chili
and in the Lake of Fagua, located in the lands of Prosper Voston. It
emerged during the night in order to devour the swine, cows, and
bulls of the area, lis length is eleven feet; its face is roughly that of
a man; its mouth is as wide as its face; it is provided with teeth two
inches long; it has twenty-four-inch horns like those of a bull; its
hair reaches to the ground; it has four-inch ears like those of an ass;
it has two bat-like wings; its thighs and legs are twenty-five inches
long and its claws eight; it has two tails, one very flexible and pro-
vided with rings that help it seize its prey, and the other ending in
a dart, which helps it kill; its entire body is covered with scales. This
monster was captured by many men who had laid traps into which it
fell. It was entangled in nets and brought alive to the viceroy, who
succeeded in nourishing it with a steer, a cow, or a bull, given to it
every day with three or four swine, to which it is quite partial. As
it would be necessary to load too great a quantity of cattle to nourish
it during the crossing, which takes at least five or six months to pass
Cape Horn, the viceroy has sent orders along the entire land route
to provide for the needs of this unique monster while making it march
by stages to the Gulf of Honduras, where it will embark for Havana.
From there to the Bermudas, to the Azores, and in three weeks it
will disembark at Cadiz. From Cadiz it will be taken by short trips
to the royal family. It is hoped that the female will be captured so
that the species will not die out in Europe. The species seems to be
that of harpies, heretofore considered legendary.

MESMERISM AND POPULAR SCIENCE 31

example, developed a technique for perceiving ships in
a fog, and a peasant from the Dauphiny called Bleton
was said to have entertained about 30,000 persons with
the spectacular feats of his water-witching "experiments"
in 1781 and 1782. The discovery by a M. de la Taupinar-
diere of a method of breathing and traveling under-
ground (he promised to burrow under the bridge of
Avignon on January 1, 1784) was spotted by the Courier
de I'Europe as an obvious hoax, but the Courier hailed the
capture of a Chilean monster (man's face, lion's mane,

MESMERISM AND POPULAR SCIENCE

snake's scales, bull's horns, bat's wings, two tails) as
"a beautiful opportunity ... for the naturalists of the
New and Old Worlds." Engravings of the monster circu-
lated in Paris, making it the subject of "all the talk" for a
week, and prompting the Courier to reflect solemnly that
it proved the truth of ancient fables about harpies and
sirens. This was no absurd opinion at a time when ovists,
animalculists, preformationists, and panspermatists out-
did each other in speculation about sexual generation;
when Restif de la Bretonne and, evidently, Mirabeau
believed that Frederick II had produced centaurs and
satyrs by experiments with sodomy; and when Jacques-
Pierre Brissot feared that sodomy would disfigure the
human race, noting that "everyone has heard of the
child-calf and the child- wolf." 16

"Everyone" certainly had heard of the extravagant
machines that showed the gadgeteering side of the
boundless faith in science. The Journal de Bruxelles
applauded the invention of an "hydrostatergatic" machine
for traveling underwater but raised doubts about the
canvas wings and tail with which a man proposed to fly
in Provence: "These experiments have gone to the heads
of the weak-minded to such an extent that hardly a day
goes by without some more or less extravagant project
being named and believed." A. J. Renaux sized up the
mood of his contemporaries in a prospectus he circulated
in Paris. He asked only for a subscription of 24,000 iivres
and a lodging in the Ecole Militaire in return for devel-
oping a machine that would fly (without gas or smoke),

16. Memoires secrets, November 27, 1783, pp. 54-55, December 6,

1783, pp. 74-75, and April 9, 1784, p. 255; Grimm's Correspondance
litteraire, XIII, 387-388; Pierre Thouvenel, Memoire physique et medicinal
montrant des rapports evidents entre les phenomenes de la baguette divina-
toire, du magnetisme et de I'electricite (London, 1781), and its sequel,
Second memoire physique et medicinal . . . (London, 1784); Courier de
I'Europe, January 9, 1784, p. 18, October 22, 1784, p. 260, and October 29,

1784, p. 276; Restif de la Bretonne, Monsieur Nicolas ou le coeur humain
devoile (Paris, 1959), V, 530; J. -P. Brissot, Theorie des loix criminelles
(Berlin, 1781), I, 243.

MESMERISM AND POPULAR SCIENCE

hoist heavy weights, pump water, grind grain, and travel
on rivers. Moreover he promised new methods of heating
and cooling apartments, salvaging sunken ships, com-
municating thoughts with great speed over great dis-
tances, and seeing objects on other planets as clearly as
if they were on earth. 17

Pseudoscience, in turn, carried Parisians into the
territory of occultism, which had bordered on science
since the Middle Ages. Cagliostro was only the most
famous of the many alchemists Mercier found in Paris.
Street venders hawked engravings of the Comte de Saint
Germain, "celebre alchimiste," and booksellers displayed
alchemist works like Discours philosophiques sur les trois
principes animal, vegetal & mineral; ou la suite de la clef
qui ouvre les portes du sanctuaire philosophique by Claude
Chevalier. Unable to afford proper doctors, the poor
turned, as always, to the cheaper exploitation of the
quacks and faithhealers in the underworld of medicine —
and probably fared better for it. "Secret remedies of all
kinds are distributed daily, despite the rigor of the
prohibitions/' the Mercure noted. Such practices probably
had always existed, but in July 1784 a Parisian correspon-
dent of the Journal de Bruxelles remarked on the era's
peculiar plethora of "hermetic, cabalistic, and theosophic
philosophers, propagating fanatically all the old absurdi-
ties of theurgy, of divination, of astrology etc." In the
periodicals of the time, one often meets characters like
Leon le Juif, who performed miracles with mirrors; Ruer,
who possessed the philosopher's stone; B. J. Labre de
Damette, the beggar-healer; and unidentifiable others —
St. Hubert, the genie Alael, the "prophete de la rue des
Moineaux," the faith-healer of the rue des Ciseaux, the
"toucheur" who cured by mystic signs and touches, the
purveyors of an all-curative "sympathetic powder" in-
vented by Sir Kenelm Digby in the seventeenth century,

17. Journal de Bruxelles, February 14, 1784, pp. 85-87, and August 7,
1784, p. 38; Journal des Scavans, September 1784, pp. 627-629.

MESMERISM AND POPULAR SCIENCE

and the child who could see underground. Even serious
scientists had long been publishing accounts in the
Journal des Sgavans and the Journal de Physique of marvels
like talking dogs and basilisks whose looks killed quicker
than bullets. To maintain that certain fountains dried up
when impure women bathed in them was to demonstrate
common sense in a day when the heritage of alchemy,
with its myths about magic potions that caused im-
mortality and cured all diseases, could not easily be
dismissed as nonsense. Alchemists, sorcerers, and fortune
tellers had imbedded themselves so deeply in Parisian
life that the police found them to be better even than
priests at spying and providing secret information. Honest
spiritualists like L.-C. de Saint-Martin, J.-B. Willermoz,
and J.-C. Lavater also flourished. They were cited in mes-
merist works and practiced mesmerism themselves.
Spiritualism seemed to complement the efforts of scien-
tists like Goethe and Goethe's Faust to penetrate the
vitalistic forces in the very marrow of the matter that

A typical plan for flying machines. It illustrates the gadgeteering
aspect of the enthusiasm for popular science and shows the
ancestry of modern fantasies about travel through space. The
"aeronauts" have left their airships and are landing by means
of their "aerostatic clothes," which also help them to navigate
in water.

The two balloons, full of inflammable air, follow a set direction,
while the third, destitute of its gas and sustained by the immense
surface it exposes to the air, is directed with the help of a rudder to
a favorable place. The two travelers who float in the air with aero-
static costumes and "manivoles" in their hands have left that vessel,
as has the traveler on the ground. He has his costume tucked up and
his "manivoles" near him. They all have cork jackets to help them
skim along the water. A compass on the front of the jackets is in-
tended to guide the travelers when fog or distance prevent them
from seeing earth. The sort of crow's nest on top of the balloons is
to hold a man who could help in maneuvering the sails.

MESMERISM AND POPULAR SCIENCE

earlier scientists had only weighed and measured out-
wardly. Mesmerism seemed to be a spiritualist science;
in fact some mesmerists described it as a modern, scien-
tific version of the mystic strain in Jansenism: the convul-
sionaries had suffered mesmeric crises and ". . . the tomb
of Saint Medard was a mesmeric tub." Jean-Jacques Duval
d'Epremesnil, leader of the resistance to the government
by the once heavily Jansenist Parlement of Paris, com-
bined his mesmerizing with support of Cagliostro, Saint-
Martin, and Dr. James Graham. 18

Thus mesmerism seems to have occupied a place
somewhere near the middle of the spectrum in which

18. The quotations come from the Mercure, March 13, 1784, p. 94,
and April 17, 1784, p. 113; Journal de Bruxelles, July 24, 1784, p. 171;
and Galart de Montjoie, Lettres sur le magnetisme animal, oil Yon examine
la conformite des opinions des peuples anciens & modernes, des scavans &
notamment de M. Bailly avec celles de M. Mesmer . . . (Philadelphia, 1784),
p. 10. On these and other forms of occultism, see: Memoires secrets,
August 11, 1783, pp. 113-116; Mercier, Tableau de Paris, II, 299-300,
VIII, 176, 299, 341, IX, 25, XI, 291-293, 352-355; Grimm's Correspondance
litteraire, XIII, 387-388; Mesmer justifie (Constance, 1784), p. 34; Remarques
sur la conduite du sieur Mesmer, de son commis le P. Hervier et de ses adhe-
rents (1784), p. 26; Eclaircissemens sur le magnetisme animal (London, 1784),
pp. 6-8; L' Antimagnetisme . . . (London, 1784), p. 3; the memoirs of Duclos
in Bibliotheque des memoires relatifs a I'histoire de France pendant le I8e
siecle, nouvelle serie (Paris, 1880-1881), XXVII, 20; and Avertissement de
M. D'Epremesnil, a I'occasion de quelques ecrits anonymes qu'il a recus
de Beaucaire par la poste (1789). For a description of a typical alchemist
session of the 1780's, see R. M. Le Suire (pseudonym), Le Philosophe
parvenu . . . (London, 1787), I, 204-211. On the police and spiritualism,
see Memoires tires des archives de la police de Paris . . . ed. J. Peuchet
(Paris, 1838), III, 98, 102-103. The indispensable general study of this
obscure subject is Auguste Viatte, Les sources occultes du romantisme,
illuminisme-theosophie 1770-1820, 2 vols. (Paris, 1928).

A satirical picture of the fashionable, foppish sort of amateur
scientist. This "physicist" plans to escape his creditors and his
mistresses by flying away in a balloon outfit.

The little-master physicist. On earth 1 am overcome/Both by debts
and by caresses./ 1 flee in the air, it's decided:/ Good-bye creditors
and mistresses.

MESMERISM AND POPULAR SCIENCE

science shaded off into pseudoscience and occultism.
By 1788, Mercier himself, whose Tableau de Paris reflected
most nuances of opinion in prerevolutionary Paris, had
moved beyond mesmerism to the belief of a "new sect"
that the world was full of invisible ghosts. "We are in
an unknown world," he explained. Such beliefs did not
mark one as an eccentric in those days; they were the
height of fashion. For example, a play, Les illumines,
featured Cleante, "a fashionable young man and an
illuminist" (un jeune homme a la mode et illumine),
dominating a debate in a stylish salon. Cleante adopted
"that sentimental language that makes us transmit our
thoughts from one pole to the other" in order to com-
municate with ghosts and to defend mesmerism. "Nothing
is more luminous: it is the true system of the universe,
the mover of all things." The Cleantes of Paris did not
consider such romantic gushing unscientific; they felt
that it was the proper style of science and of occultism or
what they called "high science" (haute science). Even
the most occult of Mesmer's followers rejected any sug-
gestion that they were repudiating the scientific advances
of their century. Court de Gebelin, the highly esteemed
author of he Monde Primitif, described mesmerism and
"the supernatural sciences" as the natural products of
recent scientific discoveries. One of his fellow mes-
merists exulted that "physics would take the place of
magic everywhere"; and another explained, "Above
science is magic, because magic follows it, not as an effect,
but as its perfection." The similarity between Mesmer's
ideas and some respectable fantasies of the academicians
who attacked them strengthened this argument. J. S.
Bailly, the author of the royal commission's report con-
demning mesmerism, held scientific theories that, as
mesmerist pamphlets noted, embarrassingly resembled
Mesmer's, and readers might even confuse the description
of caloric by Lavoisier, another member of the commis-
sion, with Mesmer's account of his fluid. In short, mes-

MESMERISM AND POPULAR SCIENCE

merism suited the interest in science and "high science"
during the decade before the Revolution, and it did not
seem to contradict the spirit of the Enlightenment. A con-
temporary mesmerist list of authors whose works "have
some analogy with mesmerism" went as follows: "Locke,
Bacon, Bayle, Leibniz, Hume, Newton, Descartes, La
Mettrie, Bonnet, Diderot, Maupertuis, Robinet, Helv£tius,
Condillac, J. -J. Rousseau, Buffon, Marat, Bertholon."
In its first stages, mesmerism expressed the Enlighten-
ment's faith in reason taken to an extreme, an Enlight-
enment run wild, which later was to provoke a movement
toward the opposite extreme in the form of romanticism.
Mesmerism played a role in this movement, too: it showed
the point at which the two extremes met. But it had not
reached this point in the mid-1780's, when a wit put it
neatly in perspective:

Autrefois Moliniste

Ensuite Janseniste

Puis Encyclopediste

Et puis Economiste

A present Mesmeriste . . , 19

19. Merrier, Tableau de Paris, XII, 352-355; Les illumines in Le Som-
nambule . . . (1786), by Fanny de Beauharnais, according to A. A. Barbier
(Alexis Dureau is certainly wrong in attributing it to Pierre Didot, who,
as a member of the Society of Harmony, would not have satirized
mesmerism); Court de Gebelin, Lettre de Vautcur du Monde Primitif a
Messieurs ses souscripteurs sur le magnetisme animal (Paris, 1784), pp. 16-
18; Thouvenel, Memoire physique et medicinal, p. 31; Fragment sur les
hautes sciences . . . (Amsterdam, 1785), p. 10. Galart de Montjoie exposed
the parallels between the ideas of Bailly and Gebelin in Lettres sur le
magnetisme animal. On Lavoisier's caloric, see his description of it in
Traite elementaire de chimie, I, 4 ("un fluide tres-subtil qui s'insinue a
travers les molecules de tous les corps et qui les ecarte"), and Maurice
Daumas, Lavoisier, theoricien et experimentateur (Paris, 1955), pp. 162-171.
The mesmerist list of philosophes is in Appel au public sur le magnetisme
animal . . . (1787), p. 49. The epigram, from the Memoires secrets, May 25,
1784, p. 11, may be translated: "Formerly Molinist/Later Jansenist/Then
Encyclopedist/ And then Economist/At present Mesmerist . . ."

MESMERISM AND POPULAR SCIENCE

Mesmerism corresponded so well to the attitudes of
literate Frenchmen that it probably inspired more interest
than any other topic or fashion during the decade before
the edict of July 5, 1788, concerning the convocation of
the Estates General, initiated a free-for-all of political
pamphleteering. Although it is difficult to measure this
interest with any precision, it certainly varied, mounting
steadily from 1779 to 1784 and declining after 1785; and
contemporary accounts indicate unmistakably that, as
La Harpe put it, mesmerism prevailed as "an epidemic
that has overcome all of France." Mesmerism occupied
more space by far than any other topic in the Memoires
secrets and the Journal de Paris for 1783-1784, the time
of its greatest vogue. Even the Almanack des Muses for
1785 is full of poems (mostly hostile) about it. The book-
seller S. P. Hardy noted in his private journal that the
"frenzy" of mesmerism had overcome even the passion
for balloon flights. "Men, women, children, everyone is
involved, everyone mesmerizes," remarked the Memoires
secrets; and Meister concurred: "Everyone is occupied
with mesmerism. One is dazzled with its marvels, and if
one admits doubts about its powers ... at least one dares
no longer deny its existence." "The great subject of all
conversations in the capital is still animal magnetism,"
said the Courier de I'Europe; and the Journal de Bruxelles
reported, "We are concerned only with animal mag-
netism . . ." 20 Mesmerism was debated in the academies,
salons, and cafes. It was investigated by the police,
patronized by the queen, ridiculed several times on the
stage, burlesqued in popular songs, doggerels, and car-
toons, practiced in a network of masonic-like secret

20. J.-F. La Harpe, Correspondance Utteraire . . . (Paris, 1801-1807),
IV, 266; Hardy's manuscript journal, Bibliotheque Nationale, fonds
francais, 6684, May 1, 1784, p. 444 (Hardy paid much less attention to
mesmerism than did most nouvellistes); Memoires secrets, April 9, 1784,
p. 254; Grimm's Correspondance Utteraire, XIII, 510; Courier de I'Europe,
October 5, 1784, p. 219; Journal de Bruxelles, May 22, 1784, p. 179.

MESMERISM AND POPULAR SCIENCE

societies, and publicized by a flood of pamphlets and
books. It even found its way into Cosi fan tutte, by Mes-
mer's friend from his days in Vienna, Wolfgang Amadeus
Mozart.

The enormous interest in mesmerism provides some
clues to the mentality of literate Frenchmen on the eve
of the Revolution. In the pamphlet literature during the
decade before the calling of the Estates General one rarely
meets any sophisticated political ideas or analysis of key
issues like the land tax. French pamphleteers produced
at least twice as many works on mesmerism as on the six-
month political crisis accompanying the first Assembly of
Notables. Failing to foresee the Revolution, Frenchmen
did not interest themselves in political theory. They dis-
cussed mesmerism and other apolitical fads, like balloon
flights. Why, indeed, should they have tortured them-
selves with the difficult and seemingly irrelevant abstrac-
tions of the Social Contract when they could fill their
thoughts with Chilean monsters, flying machines, and
the other miracles offered them by the wonderful, invis-
ible powers of science? True, the censorship prevented
serious discussion of politics in publications like the
journal de Paris, France's only daily paper. True, Robes-
pierre and other individuals took the Social Contract to
their hearts before 1789; the American Revolution made
Locke's abstractions come alive; the Academie Fran^aise
had even proposed the seemingly hot topic of the aboli-
tion of serfdom for its poetry prize of 1781 and had re-
ceived some rather heated entries. But the hottest topics
of all, the subjects that provoked debates and aroused
passions, the items with "news value" in the eyes of
contemporary journalists, were mesmerism, balloon
flights, and the other marvels of popular science. The
bulletins a la main, which generally circulated indepen-
dently of the censors and the police, paid relatively little
attention to politics, except for great scandals like the
Affair of the Diamond Necklace and spectacular events

MESMERISM AND POPULAR SCIENCE

like lits de justice. Politics took place in the remote world
of Versailles, often in the form of obscure intrigues around
ill-defined factions like that of the Baron de Breteuil,
the Minister of the Department of Paris, and that of
Charles-Alexandre de Calonne, the Controller-General,
and these intrigues had little relevance to the lives of
most Frenchmen before the prerevolutionary crisis of
1787-1788. In the eyes of the literate public, what was a
critical political event, like the death of the foreign
minister Vergennes, compared with the death of Pilatre
de Rozier, the hero balloonist, after his Montgolfiere-
Charliere caught fire and crashed during his attempt to
fly across the English Channel on June 15, 1785? Pilatre's
death, not the Assembly of Notables, aroused the pamph-
leteering instinct in Jean-Paul Marat, who lamented,
"He [Pilatre] was deaf to my voice, and, like another
Cassandra, I cried in the desert." Marat's pamphlet
demanded that youth study not politics but physics,
especially Marat's Recherches physiques sur le.feu (1780) —
and two years earlier Robespierre had taken his first big
step into the public view by speaking out in defense of
lightning rods and science in general. The point may
seem labored, but it is worth emphasizing, because no
one has ever taken mesmerism and the other forms of
popular science seriously — virtually no one, that is,
since the French of the 1780's. They looked out on a
world so different from our own that we can hardly per-
ceive it; for our view is blocked by our own cosmologies,

The death of Pilatre de Rozier after his balloon caught fire dur-
ing his attempt to cross the Channel on June 15, 1785. He had
bragged earlier that he could cross the Atlantic in two days, if
winds were favorable. The disaster checked the vogue of balloon
flights, which in its heyday had raised issues like the influence
of science on warfare, but which floundered on the more mun-
dane problem of how to guide balloons when the winds were
not favorable.

MESMERISM AND POPULAR SCIENCE

assimilated, knowingly or not, from the scientists and
philosophers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
In the eighteenth century, the view of literate French-
men opened upon a splendid, baroque universe, where
their gaze rode on waves of invisible fluid into realms
of infinite speculation. 21

One should not be surprised, therefore, to find
radicals like Marat devoting themselves principally to
fantastic treatises on light, heat, and techniques of
balloon flights before 1789, nor to find that Mesmer's
partisans included several important future leaders of
the Revolution — Lafayette, Adrien Duport, Jacques-
Pierre Brissot, Jean-Louis Carra, Nicolas Bergasse, the
Rolands, and Duval d'Epremesnil. It should help us
understand the mentality of these men if we consider
that on the eve of the Revolution they communicated
with ghosts, with remote planets, and with one another

21. Marat's remark is in his anonymous pamphlet, Lettres de
I'observateur bon-sens a M. de xxx, sur la fatale catastrophe des infortunes
Pildtre de Rosier & Romain, les aeronautes & V aerostation (London, 1785),
p. 19. Marat had a remote connection with Robespierre's famous light-
ning rod case; see A. Cabanes, Marat inconnu: I'homme prive, le medecin,
le savant, 2 ed. (Paris, 1911), pp. 235-257. R. W. Greenlaw estimated that
there were 108 political pamphlets published during the first six months
of 1787 in his statistical work on this surprisingly unstudied subject,
"Pamphlet Literature on the Eve of the French Revolution," Journal of
Modern History, XXIX (1957), 354. An estimate made in 1787 put the
number of mesmerist pamphlets at 200 (Appel au public sur le magnetisme
animal ... p. 11). This figure seems reliable, for there are 166 works in
the incomplete collection of prerevolutionary mesmerist writings in
the Bibliotheque Nationals The Mercure of October 20, 1781, pp. 106-
107, reported that the Chevalier de Langeac got an honorable mention
for his poem on the abolition of serfdom, read to the Academie Francaise
on August 25, which included denunciations of the corvee and mainmorte
and lines like, "O honte! quoi, d'un Dieu les ministres sacres/Soutien-
nent comme un droit ces crimes reveres!/C'est dans un siecle humain
que leurs vastes domaines/S'engraissent des sueurs du Chretien dans
les chaines!" The Memoires secrets flippantly dismissed Vergennes'
death (which proved a crucial factor in the government's failure to
reform France peacefully in 1787) in 7 lines, and showed far more
interest in Pilatre's crash; see the entries for February 13, 1787, p. 131,
and June 17 and 19, 1785, pp. 94 and 98-99.

MESMERISM AND POPULAR SCIENCE

over great distances; that they analyzed characters by
the shapes of persons' faces; that they supported the
claims of freakish individuals to see in the dark or to
water witch; and that they performed extraordinary feats,
like perceiving their own insides while in somnambulist
trances and prescribing the means and date of their
recovery while ill. Their thoughts drifted about among
the clusters of attitudes — flighty, nebulous, and at times
imperceptible to someone peering through two centuries
of time — that made up the High Enlightenment. Despite
its difficulties, an investigation of that remote mental
universe should improve the understanding of pre-
revolutionary radicalism; for radical ideas filtered down
to the reading public, not as so many citations of Rousseau,
but as components of contemporary interests. One may
therefore turn to mesmerism, the greatest vogue of the
1780's, to see how the radical movement worked its way
into the minds of ordinary literate Frenchmen.

2. THE MESMERIST MOVEMENT

THE MESMERIST MOVEMENT

The mesmerist movement ran a course of dramatic
twists and turns typical of the great causes celebres of the
Ancien Regime. Its Jehovah-like founder spoke mainly
through disciples like Nicolas Bergasse, who preached
to the faithful for him and wrote the letters and pamph-
lets issued in his name. His authentic voice lies buried
in history; even his contemporaries failed to understand
it, for it reached them in an impenetrable German accent
that made the gibberish of Cagliostro sound like clarity
itself. One cannot even get close enough to the man to
determine whether or not he was a charlatan; if he was,
he certainly dwarfed his fellow quacks. A friend and
patron of Mozart, a personage of the first order in Paris,
he exerted an influence on his age that testifies to the
power of the personality hidden in his robes and rituals,
the power that we appropriately acknowledge in expres-
sions such as a "mesmerized" audience or a "magnetic"
personality. 1

Mesmer was born in the village of Iznang near Con-
stance in 1734. He studied and then practiced medicine
in Vienna, where the faculty of medicine accepted the
mixture of astrology and Newtonianism that he offered
as his doctoral thesis, De planetarum influxu, in 1766.
In 1773 he ran a magnetic clinic in company with a

1. This account of the mesmerist movement is based on: F. A.
Mesmer, Memoire sur la decouverte du magnetisme animal (Geneva, 1779);
Mesmer, Precis historique des faits relatifs au mangetisme animal . . . (Lon-
don, 1781); Mesmer, Lettre de Vauteur de la decouverte du magnetisme
animal a Vauteur des Reflexions preliminaires . . . Nicolas Bergasse, Obser-
vations de M. Bergasse sur un ecrit du Docteur Mesmer . . . (London, 1785);
Bergasse, Supplement aux Observations . . . ; J. -J. Duval d'Epremesnil,
Sommes versees entre les mains de Monsieur Mesmer . . . ; d'Epremesnil,
Memoire pour M. Charles-Louis Varnier . . . (Paris, 1785); F. L. T. d'Onglee,
Rapport au public de quvlques abus auxquels le magnetisme animal a donne
lieu . . . ; and the voluminous reports in the Memoires secrets pour servir
a I'histoire de la republique des lettres en France and Journal de Paris,
which include letters from several leading mesmerists. The interpretation
here of the general character of mesmerism is based upon a reading of
the mesmerist collections in the Bibliotheque Nationale and the British
Museum.

THE MESMERIST MOVEMENT

Jesuit professor of astronomy, and later, under the in-
fluence of the Swabian faith healer J. J. Gassner, found
that he could cure disease by manipulating the magnetic
fluid without magnets. After his practice of "animal"
as opposed to "mineral" magnetism antagonized the
faculty of medicine, he decided to leave for Paris, the
mecca of the marvelous in eighteenth-century Europe.

Mesmer arrived in Paris in February 1778 with intro-
ductions to some well-placed persons and established
his first tub in an apartment of the Place Vendome. His
imposing manner, his apparatus, and his early cures
soon aroused enough attention for him to be invited to
outline his theory before the Academy of Sciences. The
academicians ignored him, however, and he fell back
upon another tactic. He retired to the nearby village of
Creteil with a group of patients he had accumulated
and invited the academy to verify his cures. When the
academy also snubbed this offer, he requested an investi-
gation from the Royal Society of Medicine; but he quar-
reled over the verification of his patients' diseases with
the commissioners sent by the society, and it refused to
have any further dealings with him. Next Mesmer turned
to the medical faculty of the University of Paris. His first
important convert, Charles Deslon, a docteur regent of
the faculty and premier medecin of the Comte d'Artois,
presented him to twelve faculty doctors at a dinner party.
But the doctors refused to take his Germanic metaphysics
seriously and later declined even to accept a copy of his
first French publication, Memoire sur le magnetisme animal,

Mesmer. Translated literally, the poem goes: "A thousand
jealous spirits have vainly tried to harm you, /Mesmer; by
your generous care,/Our ills have disappeared, humanity
respires, /Pursue your glorious destiny,/Though jealousy should
grumble about it:/How beautiful, how great it is to excite
envy/In producing the world's happiness."

THE MESMERIST MOVEMENT

because three faculty members had investigated his
cures and attributed them to natural recoveries.

These cures, publicized by a growing number of
mesmerist pamphlets, attracted ever more attention and
won Mesmer a steadily increasing number of converts,
including some influential persons. Mesmer's success
among the fashionable amateur scientists alarmed the
professionals, who by 1779 began attacking him in
pamphlets and vitriolic articles in the Journal de Medecine
and the Gazette de Sante. The mesmerists replied in kind,
led by their master, whose Precis historique des faits relatifs
au magnetisme animal (1781) set the tone of injured in-
nocence and opposition to the scientific establishment
that was to characterize mesmerist writing. While the
violence and volume of the pamphlet war increased, the
faculty resolved to extirpate the heresy by striking Deslon
off its rolls. Deslon's expulsion aroused even more con-
troversy, for the faculty, like most faculties, suffered
from internal rivalries; 30 of its young doctors declared
themselves partisans of the new medicine, and Deslon
bravely defied the old guard by challenging them to com-
pete with Mesmer in the treatment of 24 patients, to be
chosen by lot. The conservative majority of the faculty
counterattacked with a decree giving the 30 a choice of
taking an oath of loyalty to orthodox medicine or being
expelled. Two of the doctors followed Deslon into the
freer field of popular medicine, publishing manifestos
against "the most absolute despotism of opinion" of
the faculty. Deslon's own expulsion, a complicated
process of dramatic faculty meetings, negotiations, and
legal maneuvers from September 1781 to September 1784,
provided the mesmerists with a martyr whose effective-
ness was spoiled only by his concurrent quarrels with
Mesmer and ultimately by his death while being mes-
merized in August 1786. Mesmer had his own health to
worry about. He announced that he would soothe in the
waters of Spa the wounds that had been inflicted on him
by the academic officialdom of France; indeed, he would

THE MESMERIST MOVEMENT

abandon the ungrateful French to their illnesses forever.
Marie-Antoinette, apparently influenced by mesmerist
courtiers like the Comte de Segur, intervened to rescue
her people by having Maurepas and other government
officials negotiate with Mesmer in March and April 1781.
The government offered Mesmer a life pension of 20,000
livres and another 10,000 a year to set up a clinic, if he
would but accept the surveillance of three government
"pupils." After some complicated negotiations, Mesmer
refused with the magniloquent gesture of a public letter
to the queen. He shocked Parisians by lecturing Marie-
Antionette grandly on "the austerity of my principles."
He refused to be judged by his pupils; the offer smacked
of bribery, and yet it was not generous enough — he now
demanded a country estate, for, after all, what were
"four or five hundred thousand francs more or less" to
Her Majesty? 2

It was money, nonetheless, that kept Mesmer in
France through his connection with the Society of Uni-
versal Harmony (Societe de l'Harmonie Universelle).
The society was founded by Nicolas Bergasse, a philos-
opher-lawyer-hypochondriac from a wealthy commercial
family of Lyons, and by his best friend, Guillaume
Kornmann, a rich banker from Strasbourg. Bergasse and
Kornmann attached themselves to Mesmer's tubs, at the
usual price of 10 louis a month, in the spring of 1781.
They rallied around their master in September 1782, when
Deslon set up his own treatment in Paris and was there-
fore read out of the movement. Deslon returned to the
fold for ten weeks at the end of 1783, only to leave once
more when Mesmer refused to reveal his ultimate doc-
trinal secrets. Bergasse then resolved to protect Mesmer
from future schismatics and to satisfy his financial de-
mands by organizing his first twelve disciples into a
society with an initiation fee of 100 louis a member.
After some difficult bargaining, Mesmer agreed to confide

2. The quotations come from d'Onglee, Rapport au public, p. 8,
and Mesmer, Precis historique, pp. 215-217.

THE MESMERIST MOVEMENT

his secrets to the society, which, upon payment to him
of 2400 louis, would be free (according to Bergasse's
version of the agreement) to reveal them for the benefit
of humanity. Whether or not Mesmer was a charlatan,
he certainly made the most of his doctrine. By June 1785
he had established himself sumptuously in the Hotel
de Coigny, rue Coq-Heron; he traveled about Paris in an
elegant coach; and he had collected 343,764 livres, ac-
cording to the treasurer of the Society of Harmony. The
society itself also prospered. By 1789 the mother organiza-
tion in Paris had 430 members, and had spawned affiliates
in Strasbourg, Lyons, Bordeaux, Montpellier, Nantes,
Bayonne, Grenoble, Dijon, Marseilles, Castres, Douai,
Nimes, and at least a dozen other towns.

The burgeoning interest of the public corresponded
to the society's growth, for mesmerism's power to enter-
tain, if not to cure, was beyond dispute. Renegade fol-
lowers of Mesmer often offered the public fascinating
glimpses of his doctrinal secrets in letters like those
Galart de Montjoie published in the Journal de Paris in
February and March 1784. C L. Berthollet, the famous
chemist, raised a storm by stalking out of Mesmer's treat-
ment, shouting that the cures were produced by the
imagination; and the Courier de VEurope disclosed that
they were done by sulphur. These revelations only in-
creased the public's excitement. Those who could not
afford the price of Mesmer's own explanation of his
magical powers could at least learn about his equipment
and techniques from counterfeit tubs and pictures that
were hawked in the streets. If the cartoons in the collec-
tions of the Bibliotheque Nationale represent accurately

A mesmerist charlatan, his pocket bulging with money, puts a
helpless beauty into a state of somnambulism. It was widely
believed that mesmerizing was a sort of sexual magic, and a
secret report by the royal commission on animal magnetism
warned the king about its threat to morality.

LE DOiGT MAGI QUE

OU LE MAGNETISMS AMI HAL

Stoma? Sp mp ? r S i rn i 1 1 $

THE MESMERIST MOVEMENT

the interests of the 1780's, Parisians cared only about
mesmerism, balloon flights, and spectacular feats of
heroism or humanitarianism. The salacious character of
these cartoons helped imaginations dwell on such in-
teresting topics as, What went on in the crisis room?
Why did men usually mesmerize women, and why usually
on the hypochondria? Popular songs and doggerels also
fed such interests with refrains like:

Que le charlatan Mesmer,
Avec un autre frater
Guerisse mainte femelle;
Qu'il en tourne la cervelle,
Eh les tatant ne sais oil

C'est fou

Tres fou
Et je n'y crois pas du tout.

Or:

Vieilles, jeunes, laides, belles,
Toutes aiment le docteur,
Et toutes lux sont fideles.

The punch line of the most widely reproduced doggerel,
in the version that circulated in the Petites Affiches, went:

Si quelqu' esprit original
Persiste encore dans son delire,
11 sera permis de lui dire:
Crois au magnetisme . . . animal.

The hangers-on of the Cafe du Caveau, a gathering place
of gossip and news, propagated a promesmerist version
of the same song, which ended: "Loin du magnetisme . . .
animal." More prosaic hack writers fired imaginations
with pamphlets like La philosophic des vapeurs, ou corre-

THE MESMERIST MOVEMENT

spondance d'une jolie femme and Le moralist e mesmerien,
which concluded, 'Tn short, the renowned author of the
discovery of animal magnetism has done for love what
Newton did for the theory of the cosmos." 3

The movement also thrived on reports of spectacular
incidents that made the rounds of the cafes and salons
and were ultimately recorded in the Memoires secrets.
In December 1784, for example, a young man broke into
the royal levee and threw himself at the king's feet, im-
ploring deliverance from the "demon that possesses me;
it's that knave Mesmer who has bewitched me." Father
Hervier, one of Mesmer's most active supporters, inter-

3. On Berthollet's experience with mesmerism, see Memoires secrets,
May 26, 1784, pp. 13-14. The cartoons are in the Cabinet des Estampes
of the Bibliotheque Nationale, especially the collections Hennin and
Vinck (Qb I, Ye 228). They show scenes around the tubs and caricatures
of Mesmer, sometimes with a faraway look in his eye and a laudatory
verse printed underneath him, sometimes in animal form, pawing a
fainting woman. Several cartoons concern the Affaire du Collier, but
few between 1780 and 1787 could be considered political. The doggerels
come from Memoires secrets, January 17, 1785, pp. 45-46; Le mesmerisme,
ou epitre a M. Mesmer (a song sheet of 1785, followed by untitled coup-
lets); and a printed Impromptu fait au Cafe du Caveau. They may be
translated, respectively, as follows: 'That the charlatan Mesmer,/With
another confrere/Should cure many a female;/That he should turn their
heads,/In touching them I know not where,/It's crazy/ Very crazy /And
I don't believe in it at all"; "Old ones, young ones, ugly ones, beau-
ties,/All love the doctor,/And all are faithful to him"; and "If some
eccentric spirit/Persist still in his folly,/It will be permissible to say to
him:/Believe in magnetism . . . animal." The last line of the promes-
merist version is translated "Away from magnetism . . . animal." The
final quotation is from Le moraliste mesmerien, ou lettres philosophiques
sur Yinfluence du magnetisme (London, 1784), p. 8.

Another cartoon (pages 56-57) takes its theme from the refrain
of a popular doggerel. It emphasizes the animality of animal
magnetism by portraying Mesmer and his followers as dogs.
The gesture of the canine Mesmer, reinforced by music, pro-
duces chaos. The placards advertise a sale of mesmerist equip-
ment and Les Docteurs modernes, the antimesmerist play.

LKS E r I K T s JH MA<

THE MESMERIST MOVEMENT

rupted a sermon he was delivering in Bordeaux in order
to mesmerize a convulsionary parishioner back to her
senses. The "miracle" created a sensation, dividing the
town into those who thought Hervier a saint and those
who considered him a sorcerer, and it caused him to be
suspended from preaching and then reinstated, thanks
to the support of the local parlement. 4

Even more spectacular was the discovery or redis-
covery of induced hypnosis by the Chastenet de Puysegur
brothers. They found that a shepherd boy being mes-
merized on their estate at Buzancy fell into a strange
sleep, stood up, walked, and conversed according to
their orders; and they soon learned to produce the most
extraordinary effects with this "mesmeric somnambu-
lism." They mesmerized an apparently dead dog back to
life. They hypnotized large numbers of peasants tied
together around a magnetized tree. And they discovered
that a somnambulist could see his own insides while
being mesmerized, that he could diagnose his sickness
and predict the day of his recovery, that he could even
communicate with dead or distant persons. By the autumn
of 1784 the Marquis de Puysegur was mesmerizing on a
huge scale with the enthusiastic support of local officials
in Bayonne, and accounts of his feats circulated through-
out the nation along with records of cures performed
by straight mesmerizing. 5

4. Memoires secrets, December 3, 1784, p. 56, and April 11, 1784,
pp. 258-259; Remarques sur la conduite du sieur Mesmer, de son commis
le P. Hervier, et de ses autres adherents . . . (1784); Lettre d'un Bordelais
au Pere Hervier . . . (Amsterdam, 1784); Hervier, Lettre sur la decouverte
du magnetisme animal . . ; (Paris, 1784; with an introduction by Court
de Gebelin); Mesmer blesse ou response a la lettre du R. P. Hervier sur le
magnetisme animal (1784).

5. Detail des cures operees a Buzancy, pres Soissons par le magnetisme
animal (Soissons, 1784); J.-M--P- de Chastenet, Comte de Puysegur,
Rapport des cures operees a Bayonne par le magnetisme animal . . . (Bayonne,
1784); A. M. J. de Chastenet, Marquis de Puysegur, Memoires pour
servir a Vhistoire et a I'etablissement du magnetisme animal (1784). Mesmer
claimed to have discovered induced somnambulism but seems not to
have practiced it much.

THE MESMERIST MOVEMENT

The publicity given to hundreds and hundreds of
such carefully documented and often notarized cures
must have sapped the faith of many Frenchmen in the
purgative potions and bleeding used by conventional
doctors. The Comte de Montlosier, a young provincial
gentleman, was probably a typical convert to mesmerism.
He reacted to the crude religiosity of the Augustinian
monks who had directed his early education by devouring
the works of the philosophies, adopting somewhat fash-
ionable free-thinking views, and plunging into scientific
studies. Newspapers and letters carried the news of the
excitement about Mesmer to his estate in Auvergne,
where he busied himself with various experiments in the
natural sciences. When a student of Deslon's arrived in
the neighborhood and promptly cured a woman of a
disease that had kept her ill for two years, Montlosier
decided to give mesmerizing a try. His instant success
inspired him to travel about the countryside, healing
peasants and gentlewomen, and to abandon his flirtation
with atheism. He had found a deeper, more satisfying
kind of science, a science that left room for his religious
impulses without excluding his sympathies for philos-
ophy. He had found the "new Paracelsus" called for in
the Encyclopedic, the romantic, vitalistic science of nature
that inspired the dreams of Diderot and of Diderot's
d'Alembert. It seemed to Montlosier that mesmerism
would "change the face of the world," and this enthu-
siasm still burned strong in him in 1830. "No event, not
even the Revolution, has provided me with such vivid
insight as mesmerism." 6

Mesmerism's hold on the inner life of its partisans
can be appreciated from the letters of A.-J.-M. Servan, a
well known legal philosopher, a Rousseauist, and a friend
and correspondent of Voltaire, d'Alembert, Helvetius,
and Buffon. Far from favoring blind leaps into the occult,

6. Memoires de M. le comte de Montlosier sur la Revolution Francaise,
le Consulat, I'Empire, la Restauration el les principaux evenemens qui I'ont
suivie 1755-1830 (Paris, 1830), I, 132-140, quotations from pp. 137, 139.

THE MESMERIST MOVEMENT

Servan stressed the need to stick to observable facts, to
stand firmly on the ground that had been won from the
metaphysicians by Locke and Condillac. Yet his enthu-
siasm for scientific progress carried him far beyond the
limits of experience. The balloon flights had amazed him,
he wrote to a nonmesmerist friend; and, "as to electricity,
I have an electric machine that amuses me enormously
every day; but it astounds me much more. Never have
the effects of mesmerism struck me so: if anything should
confirm for me the existence of a universal fluid, unique
agent in its modifications of so many diverse phenomena,
it will be my electric machine. It speaks to me Mesmer's
language about nature, and I listen to it with ravishment/'
Servan's electric machine, like Henry Adams' dynamo,
moved him from scientific to religious contemplation. He
continued, ''For what, after all, are we, sir, in our most
exquisite sentiments as in our most vast thoughts; what
are we, if not a more or less admirable organ composed
of more or fewer stops, but whose bellows never were
and never will be in the pineal gland of Descartes nor in
the medullary substance of [illegible name], nor in the
diaphragm, where certain dreamers have placed it, but
in the very principle that moves all the universe? Man,
with his liberty, walks only to the cadence of all nature,
and all nature moves only to that of a single cause; and
what is that cause if not a truly universal fluid, which
penetrates all of nature?" 7

If they drew back from such speculation, serious
thinkers nonetheless felt compelled to take mesmerism

7. Servan to M.-A. Julien, August 17, 1781 (probably Servan's copy
of the original letter), Bibliotheque municipale, Grenoble, R 1044.
Servan's other letters show the same combination of cautious empiri-
cism and mystic deism. See, for example, a letter of April 16, 1788
(Grenoble N 1761), written when Mesmer was visiting him, in which
he warned against distorting Mesmer's ideas into an occult, meta-
physical system, and a letter to Julien dated only "ce 11 mars" (R 1044),
in which he discussed the "premier agent physique, lequel est dans
les mains de l'agent des agents et de l'etre des etres; celui qui ne veut
remonter qu'a l'agent physique est un spinoziste a tous les diables."

THE MESMERIST MOVEMENT

seriously, for the persuasiveness of its advocates and the
pervasiveness of its vogue forced men to examine their
scientific and religious principles. Condorcet, who
typifies so many attitudes of the Enlightenment, rejected
mesmerism, but he felt a need to justify his rejection and
to put his reasons down in writing. Mesmer had converted
some distinguished men, including doctors and physi-
cists, Condorcet noted; moreover, distinguished men had
often shown a penchant for "extraordinary facts." How
then was one to separate fact from fiction in the systems
clamoring for one's allegiance? It was a question that
plagued the philosophers of the eighteenth century, and
Condorcet had no satisfactory answer to it. "The only
witnesses one must believe concerning extraordinary
facts are those who are competent judges of them." But
who, in the clash of conflicting testimony, could be con-
sidered a competent judge-witness? Only the man with a
"well-established reputation," Condorcet concluded,
conceding, "That is hard for human reason." Not hard
but outrageous, was to be the reply of the mesmerists.
For if the legitimacy of the systems swarming in France
were to be determined by the respectability of the men
who testified in their favor, no ideas would survive
outside the magic circle of the academies and salons. 8
Thus mesmerism represented something more than
a passing fashion. It might even be viewed as a lay revival
of Jansenism (Meister compared Servan's mesmerist
writing with Pascal's Provinciates). It cut to the core of
contemporary attitudes, exposing the need for authority
in the vague, speculative area where science and religion
met. Seen in the privacy of personal letters and diaries,
it appears as an affair of conscience, a challenge to the
imperfect arrangement of the thoughtful man's beliefs.
Seen in the polemical literature that brought it before the
public, it appears as a challenge to authority — not only
to Hervier's superiors in the church, but also to the

8. See the selection from Condorcet's manuscripts in Appendix 6.

THE MESMERIST MOVEMENT

established scientific bodies and even to the government.
By the spring of 1784, when the Journal de Bruxelles
wondered whether mesmerism "soon will be the sole
universal medicine," the government had reason to fear
that it was getting out of hand — especially because, as
we shall see, the Paris police had submitted a secret report
that some mesmerists were mixing radical political ideas
in their pseudoscientific discourses. 9 "Never did the
tomb of Saint Medard attract more people or produce
more extraordinary things than mesmerism. At last it
has won the attention of the government," remarked
the Memoires secrets on April 24, 1784, in an account of
the appointment of a royal commission to investigate
mesmerism — or, as Mesmer and his followers believed,
to crush it with a blow from the most prestigious and
most prejudiced scientists in France.

Prestigious indeed, the commission consisted of
four prominent doctors from the faculty of medicine,
including Guillotin, and five members of the Academy
of Sciences, including Bailly, Lavoisier, and the celebrated
Benjamin Franklin. The government also appointed a
commission of five members from the faculty's rival, the
Royal Society of Medicine, which condemned mesmerism
in a report of its own separate investigation. The first
commission, however, attracted the most attention.
Undeterred by an open letter from Mesmer to Franklin
disavowing Deslon's version of animal magnetism, the
commissioners spent weeks listening to Deslon lecture
on theory and observing his patients fall into convul-
sions and trances. They underwent continuous mes-
merizing themselves, with no effect, and then determined
to test the operation of Deslon's fluid outside the excitable
atmosphere of his clinic. They found that a false report
that she was being mesmerized through a door caused a
woman patient to have a "crisis." Another "sensitive"
patient was led up to each of five trees, one of which

9. Journal de Bruxelles, May 1, 1784, p. 36. Meister's comparison of
Servan with Pascal is in Grimm's Correspondance litteraire, XIV, 82.

THE MESMERIST MOVEMENT 63

The report of the royal commission, brandished by Benjamin
Franklin, confounds the mesmerists, who escape with their loot
in the manner of mountebanks, leaving a wrecked "tub" behind.

THE MESMERIST MOVEMENT

Deslon had mesmerized, in Franklin's garden at Passy;
he fainted at the foot of the wrong one. Four normal cups
of water were held before a Deslon patient at Lavoisier's
house; the fourth cup produced convulsions, yet she
calmly swallowed the mesmerized contents of a fifth cup,
which she believed to be plain water. A series of such
experiments, reported in a lucid, rational manner, but-
tressed the commission's conclusion: Mesmer's fluid did
not exist; the convulsions and other effects of mesmerizing
could be attributed to the overheated imaginations of
the mesmerists. 10

The report only made the mesmerists boil over in a
flood of works defending their cause, the cause of hu-
manity, as they saw it, against a cabal of self-interested
academicians. In pamphlet after pamphlet they repeated
the same arguments. The commission exposed its bias by
refusing to investigate the orthodox doctrine practiced
by Mesmer; the imagination alone could not produce the
extraordinary effects of mesmerizing; the commissioners
had neglected the most important evidence of the fluid's
power, the hundreds of cures it had performed; and, in
any case, nothing could be more certain than the lethal
character of conventional medicine. These pamphlets
make dreary reading today, but their very bulk testifies
to the passions aroused by the report in 1784. 11

10. Rapport des commissaires charges par le Roi de I'examen du magne-
tisme animal, drafted by Bailly (Paris, 1784); Rapport des commissaires
de la Societe Royale de Medecine, nommes par le Roi pour faire I'examen
du magnetisme animal (Paris, 1784). A secret report to the King by the
Bailly commission also warned that mesmerism could damage morality.
Ironically, the one-hundred-third member of the Society of Harmony
was Franklin's foppish grandson, William Temple Franklin. On Frank-
lin's role in the mesmerist controversy, see C.-A. Lopez, Mon Cher
Papa: Franklin and The Ladies of Paris (New Haven, 1966), pp. 168-175.

11. The best argued and most often cited attacks on the commis-
sion's report, aside from the works of Bergasse, were: J.-B. Bonnefoy,
Analyse raisonnee des rapports des commissaires charges par le Roi de
I'examen du magnetisme animal (Lyons, 1784); J.-M.-A. Servan, Doutes
d'un provincial proposes d MM. les medecins commissaires charges par le
Roi de I'examen du magnetisme animal (Lyons, 1784); J.-F. Fournel, Remon-
trances des malades aux medecins de la faculte de Paris (Amsterdam, 1785).

THE MESMERIST MOVEMENT

Passions were further inflammed by an antimes-
merist campaign of ridicule, "that weapon with so sure
an effect on us," as the Journal de Paris remarked on
November 27, 1784, in reporting the opening of Les
Docteurs Modernes at the Comedie Italienne. The play
obviously burlesqued Deslon ("le docteur"), Mesmer
("Cassandre," a shameless swindler: "Peu m'importe
que Ton m'affiche/Partout pour pauvre medecin, / Si je
deviens medecin riche"), and their followers, played by
the chorus, which sang the finale while making a "chain"
around a mesmerist tub. Les Docteurs Modernes ran for
21 performances, an enormous success for such a topical
affair. It provided material for endless gossip, essays by
literary pundits like La Harpe, and a bitter counterattack
by Mesmer' s supporters. The counterattack was led by
Jean-Jacques d'Epremesnil, the future leader of the attacks
on the government in the Parlement of Paris. D'Epremesnil
denounced the play as slander in a pamphlet that he had
thrown into the audience from the third loge during one
of the first performances. He tried to get the Parlement,
the police, the king himself to suppress such an outrage,
but without success; so he published a manifesto de-
claring his own faith in mesmerism and had it thrown
into the audience attending another performance. "Magis-
trate, but pupil of M. Mesmer, if my personal position
does not permit me to extend to him directly the aid of
the law, at least I owe him, in the name of humanity,
for his person and for his discovery, a public testimonial
of my admiration and of my gratitude, and I hereby give
it." Another mesmerist even attempted to break up a
performance by having his lackey create a disturbance.
The lackey, however, whistled at the wrong play, not
understanding that there was a double bill. Nothing could
prevent the jibes of the play and the antimesmerist
pamphlets and poems from checking the movement's
momentum. Thomas Jefferson — the United States' rep-
resentative in France whose firm rationalism made him
consider mesmerism "an imputation of so grave a nature

THE MESMERIST MOVEMENT

as would bear an action at law in America" — noted tersely
in his journal of letters on February 5, 1785, "Animal
magnetism dead, ridiculed." 12

Mesmerism was far more alive than Jefferson realized,
for it continued strongly until the Revolution. Although
the number of pamphlets declined after 1785, two Parisian
theaters considered mesmerism topical enough to produce
imitations of Les Docteurs Modernes in 1786: La physicienne
and Le medecin malgre tout le monde. On December 11,
1784, the Journal de Bruxelles reported on the resiliency
of Mesmer's doctrine. "It withstands even the most
biting shafts of ridicule. If the capital makes merry with
the truly comic scenes of the tub, the provinces have taken
them seriously: that's where the really heated practi-
tioners are." Judging from the accounts of cures that
poured out of local mesmerist centers, the provinces
carried the main impetus of the movement from 1786 to
1789. A correspondent of the Royal Society of Medicine
in Castres wrote in 1785, for example, that even the
coolest heads in town talked of nothing but mesmerism,
and a letter from Besan^on printed in the Memoires secrets
of March 24, 1786, said, "You won't be able to believe
what rapid progress mesmerism has made in this town.
Everyone is involved with it." A vast survey published
by the antimesmerist Royal Society of Medicine in 1785
showed that few sizable towns in France lacked mesmerist
treatments. Leading mesmerists like d'Epremesnil spread
the faith throughout the country, and Mesmer himself

12. Les Docteurs Modernes, comedie-parade en un acte et en vaudeville
suivie du Baquet de Sante, divertissement analogue, mile de couplets . . .
(the quotation says, "Little do I care that I am proclaimed/Everywhere
as a poor doctor,/If I become a rich doctor" [Paris, 1784], p. 5); J. -J.
Duval d'Epremesnil, Reflexions preliminaires a loccasion de la piece
intitulee les Docteurs Modernes . . . and Suite des Reflexions preliminaires
a loccasion des Docteurs Modernes (quotation from pp. 5-6); The Papers
of Thomas Jefferson, ed. J. P. Boyd (Princeton, 1950- ), VII, 635. For
contemporary accounts of the Docteurs Modernes affair, see Journal de
Paris, November 18, 27, and 28, 1784, pp. 1355, 1405, 1406, 1410, and
1411, and January 18, 1785, p. 76; La Harpe, Correspondance litteraire,
IV, 266; Grimm's Correspondance litteraire, XIV, 76-78; Memoires secrets,
November 23, 1784, p. 29.

THE MESMERIST MOVEMENT

made a triumphal tour of the societies of harmony in the
southern provinces in the spring of 1786. By then the
Societe Harmonique des Amis Reunis of Strasbourg, one
of the most active groups, was wading into the deep waters
of spiritualism under the protection of A.-C Gerard, the
head of the local magistracy, who had written to a friend
after his initiation into the doctrine in Paris: "I have taken
a lot of trouble to be instructed . . . and I have formed the
conviction not only of the existence but of the utility of
this agent; and since I am impelled by the desire to pro-
cure all possible advantages for our city, I have conceived
some ideas in this respect that I will communicate to
you when they are a little digested." In 1787 the Sweden-
borgian Exegetical and Philanthropic Society of Stockholm
sent a long letter and a Swedenborgian brochure prom-
ising a vaster range of spiritual experience to the mes-
merists of Strasbourg. Angels had possessed the inner
beings of somnambulists in Stockholm, communicating
"an adumbration, though feeble, of the first immediate
correspondence with the invisible world," the letter ex-
plained. Mesmerism and Swedenborgianism comple-
mented one another perfectly, it maintained, and the
societies of Strasbourg and Stockholm should cooperate
in the business of regenerating mankind by disseminating
one another's works. 13

13. Extrait de la correspondance de la Societe Royale de Medecine,
relativement au magnetisme animal; par M. Thouret (Paris, 1785), p. 11
and passim. The letter of Gerard, Strasbourg's Preteur royal, dated
June 8, 1784, and other letters, showing that he used his office as late
as May 8, 1787, to promote mesmerism in matters like the appointment
of a new member of the university's medical faculty, are in Archives
de la ville de Strasbourg, mss AA 2660 and 2662 (see esp. letters of
July 10, August 11 and 22, October 3 and 19, 1784). The Swedish letter,
dated June 19, 1787, was published by the American mesmerist-Sweden-
borgian, George Bush, in Mesmer and Swedenborg . . . (New York, 1847),
quotation from p. 265. D'Epremesnil wrote the notes to Rapport des
cures operees a Bayonne par le magnetisme animal . . . (Bayonne, 1784)
and visited the Societe de l'Harmonie of Bordeaux in December 1784:
"Durant huit seances de plusieurs heures chacune, ce magistrat celebre
a expose le systeme de M. Mesmer avec une clarte, une force et une
noblesse qui transportaient les auditeurs" (Recueil d' observations et de
faits relatif au magnetisme animal . . . [Philadelphia, 1785], p. 65).

THE MESMERIST MOVEMENT

The Lyons brand of mesmerism resembled the Stras-
bourg variety, as was to be expected, for the leading
mystics of the two cities, men like Jean-Baptiste Willermoz,
Perisse Duluc, Rodolphe Saltzmann, and Bernard de
Turckheim, were united by masonic ties. The lyonnais,
however, practiced a unique technique of locating a
patient's disease, without touching him, from the sensa-
tions felt by the mesmerizer. Led by the Chevalier de
Barberin, they mesmerized ailing horses in this fashion,
confirming their diagnoses to their own satisfaction, if
not to others', by autopsies, and so provided an answer
to the charge that mesmerizing merely affected the
imagination, a faculty that the ''beast-machine" pre-
sumably lacked. The lyonnais also prided themselves on
J.-H.-D. Petetin's discovery of induced catalepsy, a state
in which patients sometimes saw their own insides.
Petetin's followers opened the way to the painless hyp-
notic tooth extractions and amputations that provoked
mesmerist controversies well into the nineteenth century.
But the most provocative variety of mesmerism in Lyons
was connected with the spiritualist cults that had taken
root in its traditionally mystic soil. The Lyons mesmerist
society, La Concorde, blossomed with Rosicrucians,
Swedenborgians, alchemists, cabalists, and assorted
theosophists recruited largely from the masonic Ordre
des Chevaliers Bienfaisants de la Cite Sainte. Many of
these mystic masons also staffed the Loge Elue et Cherie,
a spiritualist secret society which prepared to propagate
the true, primitive religion from hieroglyphic messages
received from God by its founder, J.-B. Willermoz. God
was also speaking to Willermoz through the somnambu-
lists of the Concorde, the traditional mysteries of the
Chevaliers Bienfaisants, and other theosophic groups,
including the martinist Ordre des Chevaliers des Elus
Coens. Willermoz's intimate friend, Louis-Claude de
Saint-Martin, France's most influential martinist, helped
him coordinate these messages, just as he helped Barberin
and Puysegur understand the meaning of their discov-

THE MESMERIST MOVEMENT

eries. Saint-Martin was well qualified for his role of
metaphysical consultant to mesmerists, for he had fol-
lowed the movement closely and had joined the Parisian
Society of Harmony as its twenty-seventh member on
February 4, 1784. But he felt that Mesmer's emphasis on
the action of the fluid could lead to materialism and
expose his followers to the evil influence of spirits called
"astral intelligences." Saint-Martin had learned of the
spirits from Martines de Pasqually, the founder of martin-
ism, who preached a mixture of cabalism, Talmudic
tradition, and mystic Catholicism, from which Saint-
Martin drew the main theme of his own works: the
material world was subordinate to a more real spiritual
realm in which primitive man once had ruled and into
which modern man needed to be "reintegrated." Wil-
lermoz's secret messages promised to reveal the primitive
religion that would bring about the reintegration.
Puysegur's somnambulism provided direct contact with
the spiritual world, and Barberin's technique of mes-
merizing cut the ground from under the old-fashioned
"fluidists" by dispensing with any material sort of
fluid. Thus Saint-Martin wove the later varieties of
mesmerism into a mystical and heavily martinist syn-
thesis which, carried on the wave of enthusiasm for
somnambulism, typified mesmerist thinking during the
last few years of the Ancien Regime. 14

14. Examples of the extensive contemporary literature concerning
later developments of mesmerism, especially in the provinces, are:
Pierre Orelut, Detail des cures operecs a Lyon . . . (Lyons, 1784); Michel
O'Ryan, Discours sur le magnetisme animal (Dublin, 1784); J.-H.-D.
Petetin, Memoire sur la decouverte des phenomenes que presentent la
catalepsie et le somnambulisme (1787); Reflexions impartiales sur le magne-
tisme animal . . . (Geneva, 1784); Systeme raisonne du magnetisme universel
. . . by the Ostend society (1786); Reglements des Societes de I'Harmonie
Universelle, adoptes . . . le 12 max 1785; Extrait des registres de la Societe
de I'Harmonie de France du 30 novembre 1786. See also J. Audry, "Le
mesmerisme a Lyon avant la Revolution," Memoires de I'Academie des
sciences, belles-lettres et arts de Lyon, ser. 3 (1924), XVIII, 57-101; Papus
(Gerard Encausse), Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin (Paris, 1902); and
Alice Joly, Un mystique lyonnais et les secrets de la franc-maconnerie 1730-
1824 (Macon, 1938), a biography of Willermoz which takes a sensible,
well-documented position on the much debated questions of masonry.

THE MESMERIST MOVEMENT

As the Revolution approached, mesmerists tended
increasingly to neglect the sick in order to decipher
hieroglyphics, manipulate magic numbers, communicate
with spirits, and listen to speeches like the following,
which reportedly introduced a discourse on Egyptian
religion to the Society of Harmony of Bordeaux: "Take
a glance, my brothers, at the order's harmonic tableau,
which covers this mysterious tub. It is the Isiac table,
one of the most remarkable antiquities, where mesmerism
is seen at its dawning, in the symbolic writing of our
first fathers in animal magnetism, to which only mes-
merists have the key." By 1786 even the Parisian Society
of Harmony had fallen under the control of spiritualists,
notably Savalette de Langes, the founder of the mystical
Ordre des Philalethes, who dabbled in every form of
occultism that he and his spies could infiltrate. The
mother society nonetheless seemed to be too conservative
to the hotheads of Lyons. The lyonnais severed their
ties with Paris, while the strasbourgeois maintained
their affiliation only after quarreling publicly about
their extravagant practice of somnambulism. The more
adventuresome of the Parisians were always welcome
in the open house for mystics kept by the Duchesse de
Bourbon, who mesmerized constantly with Saint-Martin
and Bergasse. Bergasse also haunted the spiritualist
gatherings at the home of J.-C. Schweizer and his wife
Magdalene, who championed the theory of physiognomy
developed by their relative, J.-C. Lavater, the Zurich
mesmerist-mystic. Other forms of German mysticism,
following the route of Cagliostro, poured into France
through the Amis Reunis of Strasbourg, and other
spiritualists, Jacques Cazotte, for example, spread their
doctrines among the French mesmerists. The Baronne
d'Oberkirch, an intimate of mesmerist circles in Paris
and Strasbourg, described several seances of these groups
and concluded, in a passage evidently written in 1788,
"Never, certainly, were Rosicrucians, alchemists, proph-

THE MESMERIST MOVEMENT

ets, and everything related to them so numerous and so
influential. Conversation turns almost entirely upon
these matters; they fill everyone's thoughts; they strike
everyone's imagination . . . Looking around us, we see
only sorcerers, initiates, necromancers, and prophets.
Everyone has his own, on whom he counts." 15

By 1789 this eclectic, spiritualist form of mesmerism,
the form that was to be revived in the nineteenth cen-
tury, had spread throughout Europe. Mesmer's ideas had
escaped his control and had run wildly through super-
natural regions where he believed they had no business.
But by then he had left France in order to search for
more fortune in travels to England, Austria, Italy, Switzer-
land, and Germany, where he died near his birthplace

15. J. B. Barbeguiere, La maconnerie mesmerienne . . . (Amsterdam,
1784), p. 63 (the quotation is typical of this kind of mesmerism, although
the source is unreliable); Memoires de la baronne d'Oberkirch sur la cour
de Louis XVI et la societe francaise avant 1789 . . . ed. Comte de Montbrison
(Brussels, 1854), II, 67-77, 158-166, 294-299 (quotation from p. 299).
See also Comte Ducos, La were du due d'Enghien, 1750-1822 (Paris, 1900),
pp. 199-207, and, for more evidence of popular occultism, the Journal
des gens du monde (1785), IV, 34, and (1784), I, 133. On the Schweizer-
Lavater group, see David Hess, Joh. Caspar Schweizer: ein Charakterbild
aus dem Zeitalter der franzdsischen Revolution, ed. Jakob Baechtold (Berlin,
1884), and G. Finsler, Lavaters Beziehungen zu Paris in den Revolutions-
jahren 1789-1795 (Zurich, 1898). The societies of Paris and Strasbourg
publicized their quarrel in Extrait des registres de la Societe de VHarmonie
de France du 4 Janvier 1787 and Expose des cures operees depuis le 25
d'aout (Strasbourg, 1787). Like d'Epremesnil, Bergasse experimented
with many kinds of occultism. His papers in the Chateau de Villiers,
Villiers, Loir-et-Cher, include his copy of Saint-Martin's mystic work,
Des erreurs et de la verite, and a letter he wrote on March 21, 1818, which
shows that he was then involved In a project to reprint Saint-Martin's
works. In a letter to his fiancee oi May 7, 1789, he described himself as
"presqu'aussi physionomiste que Lavater." The papers also contain
Bergasse's draft of his sketch of Jacques Cazotte, published in Michaud's
Biographie Universelle, which shows a detailed knowledge of the mystical
sects at the end of the Ancien Regime. Cazotte, an influential, martinist
man of letters, wrote a mesmerist work published as Temoignage spiritual-
iste d'outre-tombe sur le magnetisme humain, Fruit d'un long pelerinage,
par J.-S. C . . . , publie et annote par I'abbe Loubert . . . (Paris, 1864). This
aspect of Cazotte's literary career is not treated in the most thorough
study of him, E. P. Shaw, Jacques Cazotte (1719-1792) (Cambridge,
Mass., 1942).

THE MESMERIST MOVEMENT

in 1815. Before he may be permitted to wander out of
this narrative and into his obscure, postrevolutionary
career, it is important to take account of a schism in the
Parisian Society of Harmony that brought out the radical
strain in the movement. Bergasse's tendency to dominate
the meetings of the society had brought him into con-
flict with Mesmer several times. By July 1784 their quarrels
threatened to split the society into hostile factions, but
the defense of the common cause against the commis-
sion's report restored harmony until November, when a
dispute over a proposal to revise its statutes produced a
final break. A committee, led by Bergasse, Kornmann,
and d'Epremesnil, demanded the revision in order to
provide for the public propagation of the doctrine, now
that the subscription for Mesmer had been filled. Mesmer
balked, demanded more money, and finally summoned a
general assembly of the society in May 1785. The assembly
adopted statutes guaranteeing his supreme direction of
the movement and the secrecy of his doctrine. Then,
despite various maneuvers, efforts to arrange a compro-
mise, and a harangue by d'Epremesnil in his best par-
liamentary style, it expelled the Bergasse faction and
took over the Hotel de Coigny. The outcasts summoned
a rival assembly, which adopted statutes drafted by
d'Epremesnil, but by June they conceded that Mesmer
had kept the loyalty of most members and that their
rump organization had collapsed. They continued to
meet informally, however, at Kornmann's house, where,
freed from the orthodoxy of the Society of Harmony,
they developed the social and political aspects of mes-
merist theory. 16

16. See the sources in note 1 above and also Extrait des registres
de la Societe de V Harmonic de France du 30 November 2786, which balances
them with a pro-Mesmer account of the schism and the subsequent
reorganization of the Societes de 1'Harmonie. The papers of the Parisian
society in the Bibliotheque historique de la ville de Paris, ms serie 84
and Collection Charavay, mss 811 and 813, indicate that after the purge
of the Bergasse group, it was dominated by Savalette de Langes, de
Bondy, de Lavigne, Bachelier d'Ages, Gombault, and the Marquis
de Gouy d'Arsy.

THE MESMERIST MOVEMENT

Mesmerism did not escape a place in the vast conspir-
acy that the Abbe Barruel's imagination built into pre-
revolutionary France, but the Society of Harmony bore
no resemblance to a revolutionary cell. 17 In the first
place, as a prospective member observed, the 100-louis
initiation fee made "a tremendous obstacle" (un furieux
obstacle) to joining. Like the innocuous masonic societies
of the time, the Society practiced "perfect equality" in
its sessions, which included "persons of all ranks, united
by the same tie," as Antoine Servan emphasized in his
defense of mesmerizing. Mesmer himself proclaimed
grandly, "I am not astonished that the pride of persons
of high birth should be wounded by the mixture of social
conditions found at my house; but I think nothing of it.
My humanity encompasses all ranks of society." But
the 100-louis fee limited the society's membership al-
most exclusively to the wealthy bourgeoisie and aristoc-
racy. Even the egalitarianism of its sessions could be
factitious, as an antimesmerist pamphlet observed. "The
doors close; one is seated according to the order of sub-
scription, and the petty bourgeois who feels for a moment
like the equal of a cordon bleu forgets how much his seat
of crimson velvet bordered with gold is going to cost
him." The exact social composition of the Parisian society
cannot be determined, because the standing of all 430
members cannot be traced; but a pamphlet published
within a few months of its establishment provides a good
idea of its character. The pamphlet said that it then con-
sisted of "48 persons, among whom there are 18 gentle-

17. See Abbe Augustin de Barruel, Conjuration contre la religion
catholique et les souverains . . . (Paris, 1792), p. 161, and Memoires pour
servir a I'histoire du jacobinisme (Hamburg, 1803), V, 93, and remarks
on Bergasse in II, 317-323; J. P. L. de Luchet, Essai sur la secte des illumines
(Paris, 1789), pp. 21-22, 85. Bergasse said that Barruel based part of his
memoirs "sur le temoignage d'un scelerat qui se faisait appeler le
Marquis de Beaupoil et que Kornmann fut oblige de chasser de chez
lui, apres 1'avoir nourri par commiseration, parce qu*il decouvrit qu'il
nous trahissait de la maniere la plus infame" (undated letter to his
wife, in papers at the Chateau de Villiers).

THE MESMERIST MOVEMENT

men, almost all of eminent birth; 2 knights of Malta; one
lawyer of unusual merit; 4 doctors; 2 surgeons; 7 to 8
bankers or merchants, some retired; 2 clergymen; 3
monks." Information available on the provincial societies
suggests that they had fewer aristocrats. The 59 members
of the Harmony of Bordeaux, for example, included 20
merchants, 10 doctors, and only 2 aristocrats; and the
thoroughly bourgeois Harmony of Bergerac later devel-
oped into the local Jacobin club. But the Parisian society
included some of the greatest aristocrats in France — the
Due de Lauzun, the Due de Coigny, the Baron de Talley-
rand (cousin of the future foreign minister), and the
Marquis de Jaucourt, for example — and its members often
boasted about the number of courtiers among themselves
in order to establish the respectability of their cause,
which the Comte de Segur even defended to the queen.
Mesmer's ideal of harmony could easily be construed as
a formula for political quietism, as was suggested by a
mesmerist pamphlet recommending the "blind respect
that is due the government." "Haven't we said that any
action, even any thought that tends to upset the order of
society is contrary to the harmony of nature . . . ?" Another
pamphlet appealed to the public with a pastoral tableau,
where a mesmerist "lord of the manor, artlessly and with-
out worry, appears merely to maintain order and to re-
ceive homage." Far from harboring a revolutionary cabal,
the Society of Harmony provided a sort of fashionable
parlor game for the wealthy and the well-bred. 18

18. The quotations come, respectively, from the diary of the Baron
de Corberon, Bibliotheque municipals Avignon, ms 3059; J.-M.-A.
Servan, Doutes d'un provincial, p. 7; Mesmer, Precis histonque, pp. 186-
187; Histoire du magnetisme en France, de son regime et de son influence . . .
(Vienna, 1784), pp. 17, 23; Nouvelle decouverte sur le magnetisme animal . . .
pp. 44-45; Lettre de M. Axxx a M. Bxxx sur le livre intitule: Recherches
et doutes sur le magnetisme animal de M. Thouret (1784), p. 21. The full
membership list of the Parisian society is in Journal du magnetisme
(Paris, 1852). The members that can be identified from it were wealthy
bourgeois and aristocrats. The members of the Bordeaux society are

THE MESMERIST MOVEMENT

The society's organization and ceremonies confirm
this judgment. Even Mesmer's treatment suggested the
high status of his clientele. One of his four tubs was
reserved, without charge, for the poor and was rarely
used, but places at the other three had to be booked
well in advance like seats in the opera, and they report-
edly brought in 300 louis a month. Flowers set apart
the tub for "ladies of breeding," and Mesmer's German
doorman was said to announce arrivals with three kinds
of whistles, which varied according to the patient's social
standing. The society met in the Hotel de Coigny, where
Mesmer lived and conducted his treatments. Its officers
varied, but they usually were: perpetual president,
Mesmer, whose faulty French limited his participation
in meetings; vice presidents, Adrien Duport, the mem-
ber of Parlement and future Feuillant leader, and the
Marquis de Chastellux, the prominent soldier and man
of letters; orator, Bergasse, sometimes aided by others;
treasurer, Kornmann; one or two masters of ceremonies;
an archivist, and from one to four secretaries. Each
member received an elaborate diploma from Mesmer,
which bound him to secrecy and certified his place in
the hierarchy of disciples: Bergasse was first, Kornmann
second, Duport thirty-fourth, Lafayette ninety-first, and
d'Epremesnil one-hundred-thirty-sixth. Bergasse, who
dominated the society's meetings, claimed that he in-

named in Recueil (('observations, and the society of Bergerac is studied
in Henri Labroue, La societe populaire de Bergerac avant la Revolution . . .
(Paris, 1915). The more frivolous character of the Parisian society was
well described in L'Antimagnetisme . . . (London, 1784), p. 3: "Ce gout
pour les choses voilees, a sens mystique, allegorique, est devenu general
dans Paris et occupe aujourd'hui presque tous les gens aises . . . Mais
le magnetisme animal, considere en grand, est dans ce moment le
joujou le plus a la mode et qui fait remuer le plus de tetes." See also
Grimm's Correspondance litteraire, XIII, 510-515; the Comte de Segur,
Memoires ou souvenirs et anecdotes (Paris, 1829), II, 60-61; Systeme
raisonne du magnetisme universe! . . . (1786), p. 97, which printed the
society's rules of 1786 providing for "la liberte et l'egalite dans les
avis des membres."

THE MESMERIST MOVEMENT

tended them to be purely philosophical in character;
but, "I was asked to provide by-laws for this society,
which at first was given, in spite of my wishes, the
ridiculous denomination of lodge." 19

The sessions, initiation rites, and instruction courses
involved a combination of occult science and masonic-
like ritual, as can be judged from some excerpts from the
diary of the Baron de Corberon, who wrote the only
direct account of the society's activities (see Appendix 3).
Corberon noted a strong masonic influence on the formal
meetings in the assembly room of the Hotel de Coigny,
but his descriptions of the instruction courses rather
resemble reports of the scientific lectures in the Parisian
museums and lyceums. Bergasse adopted a professorial
manner with the neophytes. He lectured with a pointer,
drew elaborate diagrams, arranged wax balls to represent
the movement of atoms through space, and even wrote
a sort of parody of a scientific textbook, complete with
illustrations of colliding molecules, currents of mag-
netism, and such other attracting, repelling, expanding,
whirling fluids as light, heat, gravity, and electricity.
In the induction ceremony, the new members recited a
religious oath and placed themselves in mesmeric "rap-
port" with the director of the ceremony, who embraced
them, saying, "Go forth, touch, cure" (Allez, touchez,
guerissez). After the initiations, Corberon related, the
neophytes were divided into two study groups, which
met three days a week during the next month, in order
to prepare for full membership. The eleven sessions that

19. Bergasse's remark is in his Observations, p. 17. For details on
the Societe de l'Harmonie, see Histoire du magnetisme en France . . .
(Vienna, 1784) and Testament politique de M. Mesmer . . . (Leipzig, 1785).
Some of the society's papers, an incomplete collection of the diplomas,
different sorts of contracts between Mesmer and his students, cor-
respondence, mostly from 1786, attendance records, and other documents
are in the Biblioth&que historique de la ville de Paris, ms serie 84 and
Collection Charavay, mss 811 and 813.

THE MESMERIST MOVEMENT

Corberon attended consisted mainly of lectures by
Bergasse that corresponded generally to the argument
he published in his Considerations sur le magnetisme
animal. Bergasse explained the three basic principles,
God, matter, and movement; the mesmeric fluid's action
among planets, within all bodies, and particularly within
man; the techniques of mesmerizing; illness and its
cures; the nature of instinct; and the occult knowledge
obtainable through the fluid's action on man's inner
sense. Corberon observed that Bergasse dominated the
sessions to the extent that "there are plenty of sympa-
thetic spirits in Paris who would like to 'Bergassize' as
much as to 'mesmerize.'" The surviving papers of the
society show no more signs of political activities than does
Corberon's journal. The 103 letters remaining from its
vast correspondence consist mainly of routine applica-
tions for membership, usually full of the humanitarian
expressions common at the time. Typical was a letter from
a M. Oliviez, who wrote that he possessed "good fluid"
and wanted to use it to "relieve suffering humanity." 20
The Society of Harmony had originated as a project
to secure the survival of Mesmer's doctrine and fortune
when they were threatened by academic bodies and the
government. By the time of its schism, it had become
flooded with aristocrats, eminent bourgeois, and even
an academician, the Marquis de Chastellux, who wrote
an essay, published in Bergasse's Considerations sur le
magnetisme animal, on the mesmeric, antigravitational,
"special secretions of the globe." Such collaboration
probably opened the doors to some fashionable salons,
and Bergasse may have welcomed it, but his expulsion
slammed these doors shut and developed in him a revul-
sion against the fashionable, well-bred variety of mes-

20. The induction ceremony is described in the Ostend society,
Systeme raisonnc du magnetisme universel, p. 110. The letters, from 1786,
are in the Bibliotheque historique de la ville de Paris, ms serie 84.

THE MESMERIST MOVEMENT

merism. He and his expelled friends denounced "that
discordant species" (cette espece criard) in several
pamphlets accusing Mesmer of exploiting his discovery
for financial gain and of failing in his duty to publicize
his secrets for the benefit of humanity. They themselves
fulfilled this duty by giving a public lecture course on
mesmerism from the summer of 1785 until at least the
spring of 1787. The lectures, mostly by Bergasse and
d'Epremesnil, departed considerably from Mesmer's
ideas, as Bergasse indicated. "I have overturned the
foundations of his system and I have raised on the ruins
of that system an edifice that is, I believe, far more vast
and more solidly constructed." Liberated from the con-
fining organization and dogma of the Society of Harmony,
Bergasse developed the social and political aspects of
his theory — his own ideas about "universal morality,
about the principles of legislation, about education,
habits, the arts, etc.," as he put it, in summarizing his
differences with Mesmer. Bergasse and his friends devel-
oped these ideas more boldly in the privacy of informal
gatherings at Kornmann's house, where Bergasse, then
a bachelor, lived until the Revolution. The Kornmann
group reviled Mesmer for betraying the movement's
original fight against the "despotism of the academies,"
and they extended this fight into the larger battle against
political despotism. 21

There is no description of the group just after the
schism, but it probably included Kornmann, Bergasse,
d'Epremesnil, Lafayette, and Adrien Duport. By the time
of its greatest activity, 1787-1789, it had neglected mes-

21. Nicolas Bergasse, Considerations sur le magnetisme animal . . .
(The Hague, 1784), p. 148; Bergasse, Observations, pp. 53-54, 73; Bergasse,
Supplement aux Observations, pp. 20, 27. Mesmer himself identified the
tendency of the schismatics' doctrine in his Lettre de Vauteur de la
decouverte du magnetisme animal, p. 2: "Auriez-vous l'orgueilleuse
pretention de creer , . . une nouvelle logique, une nouvelle morale,
une nouvelle jurisprudence?"

THE MESMERIST MOVEMENT

merism in order to devote itself fully to the political crisis,
and it had acquired nonmesmerist members like the
future Girondist leaders Etienne Claviere and Antoine-
Joseph Gorsas. Jacques-Pierre Brissot joined the group
in the summer of 1785. Impressed by the general fascina-
tion with mesmerism and the persuasive tone of mes-
merist writings, he sought out Bergasse, who converted
him to the cause with demonstrations of "several very
extraordinary facts" and began seeing him almost daily
in "the very closest friendship." Brissot wrote his mes-
merist manifesto, Un mot a I'oreille des academiciens de
Paris, as an intimate of the Kornmann group, for he dashed
it off after an inspired "soulful session" (epanchement)
with Bergasse, and he filled it with praises of Bergasse
and d'Epremesnil without even mentioning Mesmer.
"Bergasse did not hide from me the fact that in raising
an altar to mesmerism, he intended only to raise one to
liberty. The time has now come/ he used to say to me,
'for the revolution that France needs. But to attempt to
produce one openly is to doom it to failure; to succeed
it is necessary to wrap oneself in mystery, it is necessary
to unite men under the pretext of experiments in physics,
but, in reality, for the overthrow of despotism/ It was
with this in mind that he formed in Kornmann's house,
where he was living, a society of men who spoke openly
about their desire for political change. This group in-
cluded Lafayette, d'Epremesnil, Sabathier, etc. There
was another smaller group of writers, who used their
pens to prepare that revolution. It was at the dinners
that the most important questions were discussed. I used
to preach republicanism there; but, with the exception
of Claviere, no one appreciated it. D'Epremesnil only
wanted to 'de-Bourbonize' France (this was his expres-
sion) in order to bring her under the rule of the Parlement.
Bergasse wanted a king and two chambers, but above all
he wanted to draft the plan himself and to have it rig-

THE MESMERIST MOVEMENT

orously executed: his mania was to believe himself a
Lycurgus.

"There is no denying that the efforts of Bergasse and
those who assembled in his [Kornmann's] house have
contributed singularly to speeding up the revolution.
One cannot calculate the number of tracts that it pro-
duced. It was from this source that almost all the works
published against the ministry in 1787 and 1788 were
released, and one should give Kornmann his due: he
consecrated part of his fortune to these publications.
Several of them came from Gorsas, who was then trying
out the satirical pen with which he has so often slashed
apart monarchism, autocracy, feuillantism and anarchy.
Carra also distinguished himself in those combats, in
which I participated to a certain extent/' 22

The key role played by the Kornmann group during
the Prerevolution lies outside the limits of this study,
but it should be noted as an example of the final stage in
the evolution of a radical strain within the fashionable,
apolitical movement of mesmerism in general, and its
existence raises this question: what was it in mesmerism
that appealed to the radical mentality before the Revolu-
tion?

22. Memoires de J. -P. Brissot (1754-1793), publies avec etude critique
et notes, ed. Claude Perroud (Paris, 1911), II, 53-56. Like everything else
in Brissot's memoirs, these passages are colored by his desire, shortly
before his execution, to prove his early devotion to the revolutionary
cause. Although Brissot did not name Duport as a member of the group
and there is no record of Duport's stand during the schism in the
Societe de l'Harmonie, Duport, a vice-president of the society at that
time, almost certainly aligned himself with the Kornmann group. The
records of 1786 in the Bibliotheque historique de la ville de Paris exclude
him from the list of officers and members of the "Societe de l'Harmonie
de France" that was recreated by Mesmer after the schism. Kornmann
evidently confided his papers to Duport, because the inventory of
Duport's own papers, sequestered during the Revolution, mentioned
various mesmerist documents (probably records of the society before
the schism, which are missing from the Bibliotheque historique col-
lection) including some receipts "fournies au nomme Korneman [sic],
mais pour le compte dudit Mesmer, ainsi qu'il parait par des notes qui

THE MESMERIST MOVEMENT

etablissent qu'il faisait les affaires dudit Mesmer et cela en l'annee
1784" (Archives Nationales, T 1620). A letter from Duport to Bergasse,
dated "ce 5 avril/' in Bergasse's manuscripts at Villiers, shows that he
had a high regard for Bergasse and the "fruit qu'on doit esperer de vos
talents et de vos lumieres." Duport also associated with members of
the Kornmann group in the Societe des Trente and the Societe Francaise
des Amis des Noirs.

3. THE RADICAL STRAIN IN MESMERISM

THE RADICAL STRAIN IN MESMERISM

When Jacques-Pierre Brissot became a convert to
mesmerism in 1785, he had witnessed the Genevan repub-
lican revolution of 1782; he had assimilated Rousseau's
works — from the Social Contract to the songs; he had
published his own denunciations of the evils of French
society; and he had spent two desperate months in the
Bastille. Mesmerism did not offer him new radical ideas.
He had already absorbed, applied, and suffered for the
Rousseauist views that Bergasse revealed to him in mes-
merist theory. Bergasse's vulgarization of Rousseau
probably appealed to him as a means of communicating
with the vast majority of readers who had never opened
the Social Contract, and mesmerism in general probably
fascinated him for the same reason that it fascinated so
many of his contemporaries: it seemed to offer a new
scientific explanation of the invisible forces of nature.
But the radical strain of mesmerism that Brissot rep-
resents developed as a response to another element of
the mesmerist movement.

Mesmerist pamphlets constantly portrayed Mesmer
as a dedicated man who arrived in Paris with a discovery
that would put an end to human suffering and who
naively turned to the leading academic and scientific
bodies of the country for support. One by one, the
Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society of Medicine,
the faculty of medicine, and finally a royal commission
epitomizing the academic establishment snubbed,
humiliated, and persecuted him. Mesmer's offers to have
his cures verified and to compete in public treatments
with conventional doctors exposed the wickedness of
his persecutors. His system threatened a professional
corps, which united with other vested interests to an-
nihilate the threat, regardless of the cost in human
suffering. Mesmer therefore turned his back on academic
officialdom and addressed the nonprofessionals: "It is
to the public that I appeal." This popular appeal, sounded
in hundreds of pamphlets, alarmed the government, and

THE RADICAL STRAIN IN MESMERISM

not without reason, for some mesmerist works developed
political overtones: they showed that privileged bodies,
supported by the government, were attempting to sup-
press a movement to improve the lot of the common
people. For example, in 1784 Antoine Servan, the radical
avocat-general of the Parlement of Grenoble and brother
of the future Girondist minister, castigated doctors in
terms reminiscent of his outspoken Apologie de la Bastille:
"[You] maintain ceaselessly the most complete despotism
of which man is capable . . . you become absolute sov-
ereigns over the sick common people." In a passionate
defense of mesmerism, Brissot lashed out at academicians:
"You have been told a hundred times: in crying out
against despotism, you have become its firmest sup-
porters, you maintain a revolting despotism yourselves."
Overlooking their leader's negotiations with Maurepas,
some mesmerists hinted at an evil alliance between the
government and the academies to protect the established
order. Bergasse represented a doctor of the faculty of
medicine demanding state action to prevent medical
reform, because, as he said, "It is important to maintain
[among the common people], as a constant civilizing
influence, all the prejudices that can make medicine
respectable . . . The corps of doctors is a political body,
whose destiny is linked with that of the state . . . Thus,
within the social order, we absolutely must have diseases,
drugs and laws, and the distributors of drugs and diseases
influence the habits of a nation perhaps as much as do
the guardians of its laws." Another mesmerist argued that
the defense of the faculty of medicine and the Royal
Society of Medicine had become "the policy of the state,
for whom it is important to conserve those two bodies."
In support of this view, mesmerists noted that the gov-
ernment printed and distributed 12,000 copies of the
commission's report, that it circulated reprints of academic
resolutions against mesmerism, that it printed a long
attack on mesmerism by Thouret, Mesmer's leading

THE RADICAL STRAIN IN MESMERISM

enemy in the Royal Society of Medicine, and that it
suppressed works in favor of mesmerism. After the com-
mission's report appeared, Mesmer's followers expected
an edict outlawing animal magnetism, and Mesmer him-
self prepared to flee to England as if he were a Linguet
or a Raynal escaping from a lettre de cachet. 1

At this point, the most critical in the history of the
movement, d'Epremesnil suggested that Bergasse write
a petition in Mesmer's name to the Parlement of Paris.
Bergasse complied by denouncing the commission's
report for the violation of the most basic rules of justice
and morality and "the first principles of natural law."
The Parlement should stand up against this royally com-
missioned lawlessness by placing mesmerism under its
special protection, Bergasse wrote. He requested the
Parlement to sponsor an honest investigation of mes-
merism and called for "the destruction of that fatal
science, the oldest superstition of the universe, of that
tyrannical medicine which, first seizing man in the cradle,
weighs on him like a religious prejudice." The Parlement
accepted the petition and appointed its own investigating

1. F. A. Mesmer, Precis des faits relatifs au magnetisme animal . . .
(London, 1781), p. 40; J.-M.-A. Servan, Doutes d'un provincial, proposes
a Messieurs les medecins-commissaires . . . (Lyons, 1784), pp. 101-102;
J. -P. Brissot (anonymously), Un mot a Voreille des academiciens de Paris,
pp. 8-9; Nicolas Bergasse, Lettre d'un medecin de la faculte de Paris a un
medecin du college de Londres . . . (The Hague, 1781), p. 65; Les vieilles
lanternes, conte nouveau . . . (1785), p. 82. The various academic resolu-
tions condemning mesmerism that were printed and sometimes dis-
tributed by the government are in the Bibliotheque Nationale collection,
4° Tb 62, pamphlets 54-58 and 116. For the reaction of the mesmerists
to this persecution, see Bergasse, Lettre de M. Mesmer a Messieurs les
auteurs du Journal de Paris et a M. Franklin (1784); Lettres sur le magne-
tisme animal oil Yon discute I'ouvrage de M. Thouret . . . (Brussels, 1784);
Bergasse, Considerations sur le magnetisme animal . . . (The Hague, 1784),
pp. 24-25; Bergasse, Observations de M. Bergasse sur un ecrit du docteur
Mesmer . . . (London, 1785), pp. 24-29. On September 10, 1785, the
Chambre syndicale de la librairie et imprimerie de Paris recorded the
refusal to permit the publication of a mesmerist book by Deslon, noting
in the margin, "Le roi ne veut point que Ton permette d'ecrire sur cet
objet" (Bibliotheque Nationale, fonds francais, 21866). The prohibition
was not effective.

THE RADICAL STRAIN IN MESMERISM

commission on September 6, 1784. The investigation
never took place, because the commission hesitated to
take on its task and was replaced by yet another com-
mission, which apparently never met. But the petition
had served its purpose: Bergasse wrote a year later that
it "recalled the authorities to their usual circumspection
and caution; and henceforth mesmerism and its founder
had no more public persecution to fear." 2

The seriousness of the government's threat to mes-
merism and the importance of the Parlement's defense
of it can be judged from an excerpt from the manuscript
memoirs of Jean-Pierre Lenoir, who was lieutenant-
general of police in Paris at the time. "In 1780 the vogue
of mesmerism began in Paris. The police were concerned
with this ancient practice . . . because of its bearing on
morality . . . The government opposed it only with in-
difference while M. de Maurepas was alive; but some
time after his death [1781], the police were warned by
anonymous letters that seditious speeches against religion
and the government were being made in the meetings
of the mesmerists. Then, upon the police's denunciation,

2. Bergasse printed the requete in Lettre de M. Mesmer a M. le
Comte de Cxxx (1784). The second quotation comes from Bergasse's
Observations, p. 29. On the Parlement's protection of Mesmer, see also
Memoires secrets pour servir a I'histoire de la republique des lettres en
France, September 12 and 14 and October 6, 1784, pp. 227-230, 231-
232, 275; Hardy's journal, Bibliotheque Nationale, fonds francais, 6684,
entries for September 5 and 7, 1784; and J.-F. La Harpe, Correspondance
litteraire . . . (Paris, 1801-1807), IV, 272. Several letters by mesmerists
in the Joly de Fleury collection of the Bibliotheque Nationale demon-
strate their conviction that only the Parlement could protect them
from "une persecution methodique de la part des savants et des
sages," as Mesmer and fourteen of his disciples stressed in a letter to
the procureur-general dated December 3, 1784 (fonds francais, 1690).
The letter surveyed the entire mesmerist movement as if it were a
struggle against official persecution. In another letter to the procureur-
general, dated September 4, 1784 (ibid.), Mesmer reported that, "envi-
ronne de dangers sans cesse renaissants," and as a victim of the
"persecution secrete de la part d'un homme puissant," he had appealed
to the Imperial ambassador for protection; perhaps he considered
fleeing back to Vienna.

THE RADICAL STRAIN IN MESMERISM

one of the king's ministers proposed expelling Mesmer,
a foreigner, from the kingdom . . . Other ministers were
of the opinion, which got a better reception, that it was
in the Parlement that all illicit, immoral and irreligious
sects and assemblies should be prosecuted. I was directed
to summon the attorney-general. That magistrate an-
swered me that if he lodged a complaint against the
mesmerist meetings in the Grande Chambre, it would be
referred to the chambres assemblies, where there would
be partisans and protectors of mesmerism. Therefore no
prosecution was made." Having saved mesmerism at its
weakest moment, the Parlement hesitated to propagate
it actively, which Bergasse himself neither wanted nor
expected. 3

The Parlement's stand put it in excellent relations
with the mesmerists. Although there is no record of
how many councillors sympathized with mesmerism,
La Harpe observed that half the Parlement supported it,
which seems a fairly reliable estimate, since La Harpe
attended many mesmerist sessions himself. Of course
the Parlement was no revolutionary body, and its support
did not brand mesmerism as a radical cause; but it sup-
plied the mesmerists with the only available counter-
force to the government, and by 1785 the government
struck many mesmerists as the incarnation of evil, for
it had persecuted what they believed to be the most

3. Lenoir papers, Bibliotheque municipale, Orleans, ms 1421;
Bergasse, Observations, pp. 10CK101. Like most of the material Lenoir
intended to publish as his memoirs, this is in a very crude draft. In
another note on the mesmerists (ms 1423), he wrote that, "soutenus par
des personnes puissantes, par des courtisans et par des magistrats du
Parlement, je n'aurais pas ose les troubler." He became involved with
the mesmerists in episodes resembling the Jansenist controversies.
For example, he wrote that the vicar of St. Eustache refused to bury
Deslon, the schismatic mesmerist, and "M. d'Epremesnil, conseiller
au Parlement et zele partisan du magnetisme, menacait de denoncer
le refus du vicaire. Cet incident, que j'evitais au moyen d'une lettre de
cachet signifiee au cure de la meme paroisse, fit perdre de vue les
poursuites ordonnees par M. le Garde des Sceaux, que le procureur-
general ne s'etait pas presse de faire" (ms 1421).

THE RADICAL STRAIN IN MESMERISM

humanitarian movement of their age. The Kornmann
group expressed its hatred of the government and its
indebtedness to the Parlement three years later, when
it rallied popular support for the Parlement's opposition
to the programs of the Calonne and Brienne ministries
and the Parlement's call for the convocation of the Estates
General. The important alliance of 1787-1788 between
extremist councillors like Duport and d'Epremesnil and
radical pamphleteers like Brissot and Carra first devel-
oped around mesmerist tubs. 4

Lafayette participated actively in this alliance, but he
left little indication of his own mesmerist ideology, as
he was no writer or speaker but the sort of man who made
his appearances in history while mounted on chargers
or standing on balconies in front of revolutionary crowds.
The written evidence that does exist suggests that his
experience of the American Revolution and his friendship
with Thomas Jefferson had a strong influence on his
political ideas, and further that he saw some connection
between his dedication to the American republic and to
mesmerism. Even Louis XVI associated these two interests
when he asked Lafayette, shortly before the young hero's
departure for the United States in June 1784, "What will
Washington think when he learns that you have become
Mesmer's chief journeyman apothecary?" In fact Washing-
ton already knew, for Lafayette had written to him on
May 14, 1784: "A German doctor named Mesmer, having
made the greatest discovery about animal magnetism,
has trained some pupils, among whom your humble
servant is considered one of the most enthusiastic. — I
know as much about it as any sorcerer ever did . . . Before

4. La Harpe, Correspondance litteraire, IV, 272-275. Bergasse's
violent attacks on the government during the Kornmann affair of
1787-1789 provoked the accusation that he was only seeking revenge
for the government's persecution of mesmerism (Beaumarchais, Troisieme
memoire, ou dernier expose des faits . . . [1789], p. 59).

THE RADICAL STRAIN IN MESMERISM

leaving I will obtain permission to let you into Mesmer's
secret, which, you can count on it, is a great, philosophical
discovery." Lafayette sailed with Mesmer's special cure
for seasickness (he was to hug the mast, which would
prevent queasiness by acting as a mesmeric "pole";
this, unfortunately, proved impossible because of a tar
coating at the base of the mast) and with a special com-
mission to proselytize for the Society of Harmony, which
planned to establish extensive branches in America.
Lafayette fulfilled his commission so energetically that
Jefferson, then the American representative to Versailles,
tried to prevent a wave of mesmerism at home by sending
antimesmerist pamphlets and copies of the commission's
report to influential friends. Jefferson's efforts reassured
Charles Thomson, who wrote that Lafayette had cam-
paigned actively: "He had got a special meeting called
of the philosophical society at Philadelphia and enter-
tained them for the better part of an evening. He informed
them that he was initiated and let into the secret but was
not at liberty to reveal it." Lafayette even included a visit
to a colony of Shakers in his campaign, because he took
their shaking to be a form of native mesmerism. There is
no evidence that he connected mesmerism with radical
political ideas, but in 1787 he was associated with Ber-
gasse and Brissot in the Gallo- American Society, a Parisian
group that combined its enthusiasm for the United States
with attacks on the most prominent French minister,
Charles-Alexandre de Calonne; and in 1788 he joined the
Gallo-Americans in another club that became a center of
radicalism, the Societe Francaise des Amis des Noirs
(French Society of the Friends of the Blacks). Of course
these associations do not prove that Lafayette was a con-
vinced revolutionary before 1789. Perhaps he only
flirted with the radicalism of his bourgeois friends in
the spirit of philosophical slumming described by his
close friend, the Comte de Segur. "One finds pleasure in
descending, so long as one believes it possible to climb

THE RADICAL STRAIN IN MESMERISM

up again as soon as one pleases; and so, without fore-
sight, we enjoyed simultaneously the advantages of the
patrician order and the charms of a plebeian philosophy."
In the last analysis, Lafayette remained a great aristocrat.
His social position probably prevented him from respond-
ing to the element of mesmerism that most appealed to
future revolutionaries like Jacques-Pierre Brissot and
Jean-Louis Carra. 5

What attracted these radicals to the movement was
Mesmer's stand against the academic bodies that often
dispensed success or failure for obscure individuals like
themselves, who were scrambling for recognition as men
of letters and science. Mesmer's fight was their fight.

5. Grimm's Correspondance litteraire, XIV, 25; Lafayette to Washing-
ton, May 14, 1784, in Memoires, correspondances et manuscrits du general
Lafayette publies par sa famille (Paris and London, 1837), II, 93; on Lafay-
ette's seasickness, see his letter to his wife, June 28, 1784, in Andre
Maurois, Adrienne ou la vie de Madame de Lafayette (Paris, 1960), p. 150;
Charles Thomson to Jefferson, March 6, 1785, in The Papers of Thomas
Jefferson, ed. J. P. Boyd (Princeton, 1950- ), VIII, 17; Segur's remark
is in Memoires ou souvenirs et anecdotes par M. le comte de Segur (Paris,
1829), I, 31. The Reverend James Madison wrote to Jefferson from
Williamsburg on April 10, 1785: "The Marq. Le Fayette [sic] in his
journey thro' this town had raised amongst us the highest anxiety to
know the real discoveries made in animal magnetism. But the pamphlet
you favoured us with has effectually quieted our concern upon that
score" (Papers of Jefferson, VIII, 73). For other documents of Jefferson's
private campaign against mesmerism, see ibid., VII, 17, 504, 508, 514,
518, 570, 602, 635, 642, VIII, 246, IX, 379. Lafayette's mesmerism is
mentioned in Louis Gottschalk, Lafayette between the American and
French Revolutions, 1783-1789 (Chicago, 1950), pp. 97-98, and M. de la
Bedoyere, Lafayette, a Revolutionary Gentleman (London, 1933), pp.
89-90. A mesmerist plan to establish connections in America was an-
nounced in Nouvelle decouverte sur le magnetisme animal . . . , and the
pro-American attitude of mesmerists was caricatured in La vision
contenant V explication de Vecrit intitule: Traces du magnetisme et la theorie
des vrais sages (Paris, 1784), p. iv: "Les americains, dont l'organisation
est plus sensible et plus irritable que celle des habitants de l'ancien
monde, accourent de l'autre pole pour rendre hommage a son [Mesmer's]
art merveilleux." On Lafayette's connections with the Gallo-American
Society and the Amis des Noirs, see /. P. Bris'sot, correspondance et
papiers, ed. Claude Perroud (Paris, 1912), pp. 165-166, 169.

THE RADICAL STRAIN IN MESMERISM

He had won it by attacking the arbiters, the very rules
of the game, and his example inspired them to make more
audacious attacks, to challenge the order of society as
well as the establishment that limited access to its most
prestigious positions. This anti-establishment kind of
radicalism can best be seen in the mesmerist ideas of
Brissot, Carra, and Bergasse.

Throughout Brissot's early works and even his
memoirs runs his ambition to make himself, the thir-
teenth child of a provincial tavern keeper, a philosopher,
the equal of any man in the salons and academies of Paris.
It was his struggle to satisfy this ambition that aroused
his interest in politics, for he came to see the world of
philosophers in political terms. "The domain of the
sciences must be free from despots, aristocrats and
electors. It presents a picture of a perfect republic. In it,
merit is the sole claim to honors. To admit a despot or
aristocrats or electors ... is to violate the nature of things,
the liberty of the human spirit; it is to make a criminal
attempt upon public opinion, which alone has the right
to crown genius; it is to introduce a revolting despotism."
Brissot's frustrated attempts to win a place for himself
as a philosopher, a lawyer, a scientist, and a journalist
taught him that ill-born provincial lads cut a sorry figure
in Parisian salons, academies, and professions, that the
republic of letters had degenerated into a "despotism,"
where "independent men" like himself, youths lacking
wealth and social standing, were repressed and ridiculed.
These outcast philosophers carried new truths in their
breasts, truths that threatened to disrupt the social order;
and therefore Richelieu and his despotic successors had
founded academies and stuffed them with men of great
wealth, breeding, and ignorance. Liberal governments
had no academies. (Brissot conveniently overlooked the
existence of the Royal Society and the American Philo-
sophical Society.) A government like that of France used

THE RADICAL STRAIN IN MESMERISM

academies to control public opinion, to stifle the new
truths of science and philosophy, in short, as a "new prop
for its despotism/' 6

Brissot learned this lesson at the feet of a man who
epitomized the important but generally unappreciated
connection between political radicalism and the frus-
trated ambitions of the many would-be Newtons and
Voltaires of prerevolutionary Paris. This man was Jean-
Paul Marat. Brissot was introduced to Marat in 1779 by
the Baron de Marivetz, author of Physique du Monde, a
cosmological fantasy very much like mesmerism, which
Marivetz later propagated as a member of the Society of
Harmony. By 1782, Brissot had become a devoted friend
of Marat's. He championed Marat's scientific theories in
articles and conversations; he tried to arrange for the
translation and distribution of Marat's books; he appar-
ently even proselytized for Marat by repeating his experi-
ments; and Marat responded with expressions of the
warmest friendship: "You know, my very dear friend,
what a place you occupy in my heart." The two had much
in common. Each left his modest home and ultimately
settled in Paris with the ambition of becoming an estab-
lished philosophe; and each manifested this ambition
by adopting aristocratic airs (wearing a sword and attach-
ing an aristocratic suffix to his name) and by struggling
in the main channel for self-advancement, the competi-
tion for prizes and memberships offered by the academies.
Marat, eleven and one-half years Brissot's senior, had
struggled longer and could offer his young friend advice:
"Frank and just spirits like yours know nothing of the
tortuous ways of a despot's satellites, or rather they dis-

6. J. -P. Brissot, De la verite, ou meditations sur les moyens de parvenir
a la verite dans touies les connoissances humaines (Neuchatel, 1782), pp.
165-166, 187. Un independant a Vordre des avocats (Berlin, 1781), an attack
on the corps of lawyers like his mesmerist attack on doctors in 1785,
is another expression of Brissot's frustrated ambition at this time,
which he described vividly in his memoirs {j.-P. Brissot, Menioucs
(1754-1795), ed. Claude Perroud [Paris, 1910], e.g. I, 121).

THE RADICAL STRAIN IN MESMERISM

dain them." Marat spoke with the authority of one who
had fought for years to win his rightful- seat in the Acad-
emy of Sciences. That place belonged to him, he felt,
because he had wrestled with hundreds of experiments
and filled thousands of pages with irrefutable arguments
in order to unseat the great Newton and reveal to the
world the true nature of light, heat, fire, and electricity —
which were produced by invisible fluids rather like
Mesmer's. 7

In fact, Marat's attempt to break into the scientific
elite of Paris coincided with Mesmer's. Marat submitted
his Decouvertes de M. Marat sur le feu, I'electricite et la
lumiere for the academy's approval in 1779, when Mesmer,
smarting from his recent humiliation by the academy,
was publishing his first Memoire on his own discovery.
At first the academy treated Marat more favorably than
it had just treated Mesmer, but it turned against him as
his subsequent works advanced more extravagant theories
and his claims to have outdone Newton became more
acrimonious. By the time of the academy's condemnation
of Mesmer in 1784, Marat had convinced himself that it
was persecuting him, too. Indeed he believed that the

7. Marat to Brissot, undated (1783) in Brissot's Correspondance,
pp. 78-80; see also Brissot to Marat, June 6, 1782, ibid., pp. 33-35. On
the meeting of Brissot and Marat, see Marat's article in L' Ami du Peitple,
June 4, 1792, reprinted in Annales revolutionnaires (1912), p. 685. For
Brissot's not very convincing explanation of the suffix "de Warville"
that he adopted, see Reponse de Jacques-Pierre Brissot a tous les libellistes
qui ont attaque et attaquent sa vie passee (Paris, 1791), p. 5. The best
biography of Brissot is still Eloise Ellery, Brissot de Warville (Boston,
1915). Marat's career before the Revolution is treated most thoroughly
in Cabanes, Marat inconnu, Yhomme prive, le medecin, le savant ... 2 ed.
(Paris, 1911). Louis Gottschalk, in Jean Paul Marat: A Study in Radicalism
(New York, 1927), interprets Marat's quarrel with the Academy of
Sciences as the crucial element in his revolutionary career. This inter-
pretation coincides with Marat's own view, published in his Le Publiciste
de la republique francaise, ou observations aux francais (March 19, 1793):
"Vers l'epoque de la revolution, excede des persecutions que j'eprouvais
depuis si longtemps de la part de l'Academie des Sciences, j'embrassai
avec ardeur l'occasion qui se presentait de repousser mes oppresseurs
et de me mettre a ma place."

THE RADICAL STRAIN IN MESMERISM

Newtonian philosophers and their evil allies were con-
spiring against him in positions of power throughout
France: they were confiscating his books, conniving to
keep his letters out of journals, even plotting to suppress
his new truths in secret meetings of the faculty of medicine
(like the faculty's meetings to crush mesmerism). Marat's
desire to avenge himself against the Academy of Sciences
provided the main thrust behind his strange revolutionary
career, which was principally a campaign against con-
spirators. "One needs the zeal of a friend when one is
pitted against so powerful a faction," he confided to
Brissot in 1783. Mesmer was then fighting the same fac-
tion, and Marat probably sympathized with his parallel
struggle, although there is no evidence that Marat went
beyond his announcement in a letter to P.-R. Roume de
Saint Laurent of June 19, 1783: "I am going to look into
M, Mesmer and will send you a thorough report. But it
is no passing affair. You know how I like to examine
things and to examine them with care before pronouncing
on them." In any case, Brissot adopted Marat's views
of the conspiratorial academic establishment and sharp-
ened an attack on academic "despotism" in 1782 by
praising Marat for having "courageously overturned the
idol of the academic cult and substituted well-proved
facts for Newton's theory of light." Feeling himself barred
by the academic establishment from becoming a philos-
ophe, Brissot, like Marat, threw himself into the revolu-
tionary career that opened up for him in 1789. The
resentments produced by his frustrated literary and
scientific ambitions in the 1780's provided the crucial
element in that career, and probably in many careers
like his. 8

8. Marat to Brissot, undated (1783), in Brissot's Correspondance,
p. 79; Marat to Roume de Saint Laurent, June 19, 1783, in A. Birembaut,
"Une lettre inedite de Marat a Roume," Annates historiques de la Revolu-
tion Fran$aise (1967), pp. 395-399; the final quotation is from Brissot,
De la verite, pp 173-174. Marat's letter to Roume should not be taken
as evidence that Marat believed in mesmerism, although Marat's

THE RADICAL STRAIN IN MESMERISM

Mesmerism carried Brissot much further down the
path of political radicalism than did Marat, for mes-
merism provided him with a perfect anti-establishment
cause, a cause, moreover, that had gripped and held the
public's attention and that had united behind it the
group of radicals who met at Kornmann's house and who
offered to take in Brissot. Brissot accepted the invitation
and threw himself into the movement by publishing
another violent attack on academicians. "I have come to
give you a lesson, gentlemen, and I have a right to do so;
I am independent, and there is not one of you who is
not a slave. I am not connected with any corps, and you
are bound to yours. I don't cling to any prejudice, and
you are chained by those of your corps, by those of all
the persons in power whom you venerate basely as idols,
although you secretly despise them."

In a letter to J. C. Lavater, the mesmerist-physiog-
nomist-mystic, Brissot described the pamphlet containing
this attack as "my profession of faith." Judging from the
pamphlet itself, his faith was boundless, for Brissot
declared his belief in the most extreme tenets of mes-
merism with a spirit of indiscriminate credulity that

Memoire sur Velectricite medicate . . . (Paris, 1784) shows that he refused
to come out against it, and the mesmerists claimed that his experiments
actually made the fluid visible (see J. B. Bonnefoy, Analyse raisonnee
des rapports des commissaires . . . [Lyons, 1784], pp. 27-28). By 1791,
Marat had relegated Mesmer to the class of "jongleurs," but he empha-
sized that academic "jalousie" accounted for the persecution of mes-
merism, and he still fulminated against academic despotism (see Marat,
Les Charlatans modernes, ou lettres sur le charlatanisme academique [Paris,
1791], pp. 6-7). The point is that his struggle against scientific officialdom
paralleled Mesmer's. Marat best revealed his attitude to this struggle
in his letters to Roume, especially the extraordinary letter of November
20, 1783, in Correspondance de Marat, recueillie et annotee par Charles
Vellay (Paris, 1908), pp. 23-87. Marat's almost insane hatred of academi-
cians should not obscure the fact that he was respected, if not lionized,
as a scientist, even in 1785 (see Journal de Physique, September 1785,
p. 237), nor the fact that he had reasons to fear a conspiracy against
him. A police report, made between 1781 and 1785, stated, "M. Vicq
d'Azir demande au nom de la Societe Royale de Medecine qu'il [Marat]
soit chasse de Paris" (Bibliotheque municipale, Orleans, ms 1423).

THE RADICAL STRAIN IN MESMERISM

typified the occultism of his time: "An extraordinary
fact is a fact that doesn't link up with those that we
know or with laws that we have fabricated. But should
we believe that we know all of them?" Never, he declared,
had a discovery been so thoroughly proven as mesmerism,
and he cited the works of Bergasse, Puysegur, and Servan
as evidence. He condemned the disdain of academicians
for the mesmerist-tinged theories of Court de Gebelin,
who "holds the common people, the downtrodden, close
to his heart." He defended even those on the fringe of
the movement, like Bleton, the water witcher, and Bot-
tineau, the seer; and he championed the claims of som-
nambulists to perceive their own insides and to com-
municate with one another over great distances. In fact,
Brissot revealed that he had shared such experiences
himself. "But I, a father who fears doctors, I love mes-
merism because it identifies me with my children. How
sweet it is to me . . . when I see them obey my inner
voice, bend over, fall into my arms and enjoy sleep!
The state of a nursing mother is a state of perpetual
mesmerism. We unfortunate fathers, caught up in our
business affairs, we are practically nothing to our children.
By mesmerism, we become fathers once again. Hence a
new benefit for society, and it has such need of one!"
If these allusions to breast feeding and family sentiment
evoked Rousseau, it was because Brissot had read occult
messages into Rousseau's works. In another pamphlet,
his Examen critique, which announced his own percep-
tions of "sublime glimmers . . . beyond our globe, in a
better world," he argued that to condemn illuminism
was to condemn "almost all the true philosophers, and
especially Rousseau. Read his Dialogues with himself.
They seem written in another world. The author who
exists only in this [world], who has never passed beyond
its limits, could not write two sentences of them."

His Rousseauism inspired Brissot to see many impli-
cations, "even political, even moral," in mesmerist

THE RADICAL STRAIN IN MESMERISM

theory; so his mesmerist pamphlet proclaimed a new force
for equality: "Don't you [academicians] see, for example,
that mesmerism is a way to bring social classes closer to-
gether, to make the rich more humane, to make them into
real fathers of the poor? Wouldn't you be edified at the
sight of the most eminent men . . . supervising the health
of their servants, spending hours at a time mesmerizing
them?" But, Brissot noted pointedly, the academicians
had "tried to inflame the government against the partisans
of mesmerism"; and so he denounced their medico-
politics: "I'm afraid that the habit of despotism has
ossified your souls."

So violent were his denunciations that Brissot's
defense of mesmerism seemed secondary to his desire
to heap abuse on the "base parasites" and "oppressors
of the fatherland" in the academies, on the "vile adulators"
of the "magnates, of the rich, of princes" in the salons,
and on the "half-talents who put themselves up front and
drive true talent back into hiding." Brissot alluded to
his own efforts to establish himself as a philosophic
journalist in London, which had collapsed following his
recent imprisonment in the Bastille. "If there is in your
way one of these free, independent men . . . you praise
him, you pity him, but you let it be known that his pen
is dangerous, that the government has proscribed it,
and that its proscription could bring about that of the
journal." Academicians shut their doors to independent
philosophers like the mesmerists, then inflamed the
government against them. Only the courage of mesmerist
leaders like Bergasse and d'Epremesnil prevented them
from being locked in prisons. And while the academicians
suppressed Truth, they courted the fashionable public
in organizations like La Harpe's Lyceum, where "for a
sum you amuse stylish women [femmes de bon ton] and
bored young men, who take a lesson in literature or
history like a lesson in dancing or fencing." Brissot
detested this alien world of bon ton. When he and his

THE RADICAL STRAIN IN MESMERISM

mesmerist friends threatened it, he found that it re-
sponded as it had always responded to innovation,
reason, progress: by persecution. "It is here [concerning
mesmerism] especially that you [academicians] have
displayed your spirit of intrigue, your imperious despo-
tism, your maneuvers among magnates and women."
Brissot's mesmerism was a stage in the process of shifting
his hatred of "nos aristocrates litteraires" (our literary
aristocrats) to the aristocracy. By 1789 the struggle of
the "independent" against the academic oligarchy had
become absorbed in a more general fight for indepen-
dence. This aspect of Brissot's radicalism has been
misunderstood, because his biographers have been
unable to find his mesmerist manifesto, appropriately
entitled, Un mot a Voreille des academiciens de Paris. 9
As in Brissot's case, mesmerism gave Jean-Louis
Carra a way of venting his fury at being excluded from
his rightful place among the leading philosophers of
Paris. Like Brissot, Carra laid claim to this place by
publishing surveys and syntheses of vast domains of
knowledge. He wrote a romantic novel, two metaphys-
ical-ethical-political treatises, two books on Eastern
Europe, a theoretical work on balloon flights, a six-
volume translation of John Gillies' history of ancient
Greece, and three abstruse works on physics and chem-
istry. In the popular scientific literature of the time one
catches glimpses of him scrambling to advance himself —

9. Brissot's letter to Lavater, dated January 28, 1787, is in Zentral-
bibliothek, Zurich, Lavater papers, ms 149. The quotations come from
J,-P. Brissot (anonymous), Un mot a Voreille des academiciens de Paris,
pp. 1, 3-10, 13, 15, 18, 20-21, 24; and Brissot, Examen critique des Voyages
dans I'Amerique Septentrionale de M. le Marquis de Chatellux . . . (London,
1786), pp. 49, 55. The remark about literary aristocrats is on p. 21 of the
Examen. I have found two copies of Brissot's Mot in the Bibliotheque
historique de la ville de Paris. Brissot revealed the depth of his hatred
of academicians and the "despotisme" of the fashionable salons from
which he was excluded in De la verite, p. 15, and esp. p. 319: "Us me
revoltaient, et je disais a ces tyrans dans la douleur de mon ame: vos
cruautes ne seront pas toujours impunies: votre orgueil sera humilie:
je ferai votre histoire, et vous serez couverts d'opprobre."

THE RADICAL STRAIN IN MESMERISM

reading a comparison of "lucific" (lucifiques) and "conific"
(conifiques) vibrations to the Museum of Court de
Gebelin, for example, and publishing some experiments
with sulphur in the Journal de Paris. He even managed
to get a hearing from the Academy of Sciences for his
proposal to steer balloons by applying an unintelligible
geometric formula and rowing with taffeta ''wings/'
But the academy refused to award him its special prize
for the best project for directing balloons. The academy
of Dijon also refused to take notice of his discovery that
fire was produced by the "counter-shocks" of Marat's
"igneous fluid" and Marivetz's mesmeric ether — not,
Carra insisted, by the gases that Lavoisier had mis-
understood so badly.

No one in respectable scientific circles seems to have
taken Carra seriously, unless a stray word of praise in
the Journal des Scavans, which later closed its columns
to him, was not meant to be ironic: "He is a creative
genius; he explains everything down to the smell of a
flower by centrifugal force." More typical was a letter in
the Courier de I'Europe of January 17, 1783, by Joseph
Lalande, the astronomer and academician. Carra had
maligned the academies, Lalande maintained, because
they had treated his works for what they were — "the
absurdities and the dreaming of an imbecile." Carra
responded to this treatment by adopting the pose of a
misunderstood genius, a "prophete philosophe," who
despised worldly success. "Except for a few men priv-
ileged by nature and by reason, the others are not made
to understand me." But he destroyed the credibility of
this pose by flying into a rage against the men at the
top, especially nobles and kings, "monstrous crocodiles,
vomiting flames on every side; their eyes are red with
blood; they kill just by their look." This was hardly the
tone of philosophic aloofness; it sounded more like the
almost apoplectic declamations of Marat. Of course one
cannot conclude from Carra's respectful references to
Marat's scientific works that the two secluded themselves

THE RADICAL STRAIN IN MESMERISM

in the laboratory as if they were mad scientists sharing
fantasies of blowing up the Ancien Regime with one of
their wonderful fluids. But a mad, explosive atmosphere
permeates their scientific treatises. For example, Carra
prefaced a geological explanation of how the earth's
poles would shift to the equator in 24,000 years with an
appeal to the poor to demand their natural rights, to
revolt against the rich, the nobles, and the kings, to
"purge this very earth of the monsters that devour it."

His hatred of the established order festered deep
within him, for the forces of that order had smashed into
his life and carried him away to prison at the age of
sixteen under suspicion of being a thief. At about this
time his mother died. His father had died when he was
seven. So in prison he may well have felt cut off from
everything, from family, friends, and the sort of career
that awaited his schoolmates who continued their Latin,
rhetoric, and philosophy under the good Jesuits of Macon.
Young Carra must have philosophized in a different
manner in his prison; and he had time to think, because
he remained there for two years and four months. After
his release, he wandered through Germany and the
Balkans, supporting himself by hack writing and what-
ever else came to hand. By the time Mesmer began to
battle the scientific establishment, Carra had settled in
Paris as an employe in the Bibliotheque du Roi, a self-
proclaimed successor of Newton, and, like Marat and
Brissot, a professional outsider. From Carra's point of
view, mesmerism looked like a revolutionary cause;
and, indeed, it led him into the Revolution, where he
at last found an outlet for his pent-up hatreds as a poli-
tician, journalist, and supporter of Brissot, his former
mesmerist companion in the Kornmann group. 10

10. Among Carra's works, see esp. Nouveaux principcs de physique,
3 vols. (Paris, 1781-1782); Systeme de la raison ou le prophete philosophe
(London, 1782); Esprit de la morale et de la philosophic (The Hague, 1777);
Dissertation elementaire sur la nature de la lumiere, de la chaleur, du feu

THE RADICAL STRAIN IN MESMERISM

Nicolas Bergasse shared the disgust of Brissot and
Carra at the closed, aristocratic character of the Parisian
world of letters, but he had more in common with Brissot's
broader demand "to open up to merit the path to digni-
ties, to honors." "What a source of power is ambition!
Happy is the state, where, in order to be first, it is neces-
sary only to be greatest in merit." Again and again,
Bergasse sounded the same theme, which he developed
most fully in his Observations sur le prejuge de la noblesse
hereditaire: "Our liberty must be given back to us; all
careers must be opened up to us." The theme came more
naturally to Bergasse than to Brissot, for Brissot teetered
on the brink of bankruptcy before the Revolution, while
Bergasse enjoyed a considerable income from his family's
businesses. Bergasse's father had married into a prom-
inent commercial family of Lyons and had gone into
commerce himself in the 1740's. Nicolas' four brothers
became wealthy merchants, and Nicolas always retain-

ed de I'electricite (London, 1787), based partly on the mesmerist experi-
ments he described in the Journal de Paris, May 11, 1784, pp. 572-573;
Essai sur la nautique aerienne . . . (1784); and Examen physique du magne-
tisme animal . . . (London, 1785). The quotations come from Carra's
Dissertation, p. 28 (the Baron de Marivetz, a member of the Societe de
l'Harmonie of Paris and a friend of Brissot's, developed an anti-New-
tonian ether theory in his popular Physique du Monde [1780-1787]);
Journal des Scavans, February 1784, pp. 111-112; Carra (anonymously),
Systeme de la raison, pp. 151, 52, 68. Carra set the passionate tone of
this book by his opening challenge "aux pretendus maitres de la terre"
(p. 5): "Fleaux du genre humain, illustres tyrans de vos semblables,
hommes qui n'avez que le titre, rois, princes, monarques, empereurs,
chefs, souverains, vous tous enfin qui, en vous elevant sur le trone et
au-dessus de vos semblables, avez perdu les idees d'egalite, d'equite,
de sociabilite . . . je vous assigne au tribunal de la raison." The only
sketch of his obscure early career is P. Montarlot, "Carra," from "Les
deputes de Saone-et-Loire aux Assemblies de la Revolution," in Me-
moires de la Societe Eduenne (1905), new series, XXXIII, 217-224. See also
Appendix 2. Two letters from Carra to the Societe Typographique de
Neuchatel, dated December 6 and 21, 1771, exist in the society's manu-
scripts in the Archives de la ville de Neuchatel, ms 1131. They provide
evidence of his vitriolic temperament but do not tell much about his
career, aside from his quarrel with his employer, L. C. Gaudot, of the
Supplement to the Encyclopedic.

THE RADICAL STRAIN IN MESMERISM

tained an interest in commercial affairs, but preferred
to teach in Oratorian schools, then to qualify for the bar,
and finally to philosophize privately while nursing his
ill health. "My wealth is generally known; it is no secret
that it more than provides for my needs, that it makes me
absolutely independent," he wrote in 1789, and he out-
lined this fortune in a letter to his fiancee, Perpetue du
Petit-Thouars, in December 1790: "Before it pleased this
good people to want to be free, I had a capital that brought
me five to six thousand livres in income and in addition
a share in my brothers' company that brought me ten
thousand livres annually and later was to bring me more."
Bergasse represented the commercial bourgeois who
welcomed the calling of the Estates General as a means of
winning a political role commensurate with their eco-
nomic importance. He developed this view in some of
the most important of the pamphlets about the composi-
tion of the Estates General in 1789. Denouncing the
aristocracy's dominance in the church, the army, and the
judiciary as well as in the academies, he derided the
absurdity of privilege based upon birth, the nobles'
origin in "the sad chaos of feudal government," and their
inability to perform successfully in the posts reserved so
unjustly for them. He had emphasized the bourgeois
character of his demands nine years earlier in an essay
calling for free trade in the name of "the industrious
class of the nation." The essay distinguished neatly
between this class, composed mainly of merchants and
landowners like the Bergasses, and "that class of the
common people that has no property." 11

11. J. -P. Brissot, Un independant a Yordre des avocats, pp. 47-48;
Nicolas Bergasse, Observations sur le prejuge de la noblesse hereditaire
(London, 1789), pp. 40 and 5; Bergasse, Observations du sieur Bergasse
dans la cause du sieur Kornmann (1789), p. 7; Bergasse's letter to Perpetue,
not dated exactly, is in his papers at the Chateau de Villiers, Villiers,
Loir-et-Cher. The letter explained that his two brothers in Lyons had
500,000 livres in capital, which they expected to double in ten years,
and his two brothers in Marseilles, though less wealthy, were well off.
In a letter to Perpetue dated May 7 (1789?) he described their practice

THE RADICAL STRAIN IN MESMERISM

Bergasse first developed his anti-aristocratic ideas
in notes to a mesmerist pamphlet, Autres reveries sur le
magnetisme animal, by his friend and convert to mes-
merism, the Abbe Petiot, who was a secretary of the
Society of Harmony. The pamphlet denounced the
"scientific intolerance" of academicians and drew this
conclusion from their attacks on mesmerism: "In general,
all exclusive privileges are favorable to some sort of
aristocracy; only the king and the people have a constant
common interest." This defense of mesmerism anticipated
the main thrust of radical propaganda of 1789: the king
and the third estate should ally against the aristocracy.
Bergasse made this position perfectly clear in his notes,
which shifted the argument against the academies'
privileges to a broad attack on all privileges derived
from "feudal anarchy." He heaped scorn upon every-
thing connected with the aristocracy — its heraldry, its
pomp, its claim to privileges because of its ancestry, its
"chivalric superstition." Indignant at the feudal reac-
tion that was then animating the aristocracy, he pro-
tested, "One must be born before the fourteenth century
to pretend to maintain near the throne an aristocratic
system that determines the order in which the king must
choose those serving him in his household and his army."
The bourgeois should oppose the noble's claims to tradi-
tional privileges by replying that "he does not know how
to read Gothic." Bergasse demanded the opening of all
top posts to the third estate and warned it to beware of
collusion between the two privileged orders, "which

of sharing profits, 'Tespece de systeme republicain qui existe entre
nous, comment toutes nos richesses sont communes, Tun ne voulant
jamais etre plus fortune que l'autre." The final two quotations come
from Bergasse, Considerations sur la liberte du commerce . . . (The Hague,
1780), pp. 61-62. The main study of Bergasse, the "monarchien" whose
disaffection with the Revolution has obscured his role as a leading
radical from 1787 until October 1789, is the biography written anon-
ymously by his descendant, Louis Bergasse, Un defenseur des principes
traditionnels sous la Revolution, Nicolas Bergasse (Paris, 1910).

THE RADICAL STRAIN IN MESMERISM

keep two votes for the same purpose" (qui conserve
deux voix pour le meme voeu). He called upon the people
to unite with the king "in order to make all citizens
noble and all nobles citizens." He formulated the great
question that was to be repeated endlessly in the pamphle-
teering of 1789: "How do you hope to succeed in your
attempt to strip the ancient aristocracy of its influence,
which is more lucrative than its antiquated power?"
And he answered it, "You will have for you only the law,
the people and the King." No less extreme than the classic
formulation of the third estate's demands by Sieves in
1789, this appeal appeared in a mesmerist pamphlet of
1784 that was ostensibly intended to refute the royal
commission's report against animal magnetism. 12

At this point it should be clear that an underground
current of radicalism ran throughout the mesmerist
movement and occasionally erupted in violent political
pamphlets. Mesmerism offered Brissot, Carra, and
Bergasse an opportunity to declaim against abuses that
seemed to impede their advancement and that of their
class. Some of their mesmerist colleagues, however —
notably Lafayette, Duport, and d'Epremesnil — enjoyed
very exalted positions in the Ancien Regime. Lafayette
and Duport used their positions to lead the revolutionary
cause from 1787 to 1789, but d'Epremesnil has been cast

12. Autres reveries sur le magnetisme animal, a un academicien de
province (Brussels, 1784), quotations from pp. 21, 39, 46-47. A very
accurate contemporary work on mesmerism in Paris (Testament politique
de M. Mesmer . . . [Leipzig, 1785; by a Dr. Bruck, according to A. -A.
Barbier], p. 32) said this pamphlet was written by Petiot and "corrige
et note" by Bergasse (the notes were longer than the text). It was a sequel
to Petiot's Lettre de M. I 'abbe Pxxx de I' Academie de la Rochelle a Mxxx de
la meme academie (1784), which eulogized Bergasse. Petiot also wrote
a violent attack on academicians and aristocrats in 1789, La liberte de
la presse, denonciatiort- d'une nouvelle conspiration de l aristocratic francaise
. . . The only information on Petiot's obscure career is a brief manuscript
notice in the Bibliotheque municipale de la Rochelle, ms 358. In Le
Patriote francois of March 16, 1791, Brissot wrote, "M. l'abbe Petiot
professait ouvertement dans Paris, depuis dix ans, la doctrine anti-
aristocratique."

THE RADICAL STRAIN IN MESMERISM

by historians in the role of a reactionary. In fact, many
historians regard d'Epremesnil as the leader of the
aristocratic revolt of 1787-1788 that precipitated the
Revolution. The ambiguities of the "revolte nobiliaire"
thesis lie beyond the range of this study, but the ambig-
uous role of d'Epremesnil is relevant in reconstructing
the contemporary view of events. Few Frenchmen con-
sidered d'Epremesnil or the Parlement of Paris reactionary
before September 25, 1788, the date of the Parlement's
recommendation that the Estates General be organized
in a way that favored the aristocracy. If the bookseller

5. -P. Hardy represents the views of a typical Parisian
bourgeois, d'Epremesnil was seen as a "humane, char-
itable magistrate," a popular hero who dared "repulse
the attacks against the citizens' liberty," a martyred
"patriot," "forever famous" for being imprisoned in
June 1788 as a. result of the "cruel persecution on the part
of the ministers." This view may have been wrong, but
it existed and exerted an important influence on events
in the summer of 1788. The loathsome sight of the Bastille
probably hid the aristocratic revolt from the eyes of most
Parisians at that time. In any case, there was nothing
incongruous in the alliance in Kornmann's house of
members of Parlement like d'Epremesnil and Duport and
hack pamphleteers like Brissot and Carra, and there was
nothing that their contemporaries or they themselves
would have recognized as reactionary in their attacks on
the government or in their mesmeric theory of revolu-
tion. 13

13. The quotations are from Hardy's journal in the Bibliotheque
Nationale, fonds francais, 6687, entries for October 1, 1787, and May 5,

6, and 18, 1788. The only special study on d'Epremesnil is Henri Carre,
"Un precurseur inconscient • de la Revolution: le conseiller Duval
d'Epremesnil (1787-1788)," La Revolution Francaise, October and Novem-
ber 1897, pp. 349-373 and 405-437. Lenoir believed that d'Epremesnil's
house was a center of sedition (Bibliotheque municipale, Orleans, ms
1423). The "Revolte nobiliaire" thesis is best known in this country
from Georges Lefebvre's Quatre-vingt-neuf , translated by R. R. Palmer
as The Coming of the French Revolution: 1789 (Princeton, 1947).

4. MESMERISM AS A RADICAL POLITICAL
THEORY

A RADICAL POLITICAL THEORY 107

Mesmerism provided embittered hack writers like
Carra with a weapon against the exclusive scientific and
literary bodies of Paris, but it presented itself to most
readers as a scientific cosmology. Carra and his friends,
especially Bergasse, dealt with the cosmological side of
mesmerism by extracting a political theory from the
obscure, strictly apolitical pontifications of Mesmer.
"Political theory" may be too dignified a term for their
distortions of his ideas, but they themselves considered
their theories consistent and reasonable, and the police
viewed them as a threat to the state. Just how political
the mesmerist sessions became is difficult to tell because
there is no record of the discussions that went on in
Kornmann's house. Also, the censors and the police
forced the radical mesmerists to be cautious in their
publications; so it is only by piecing together remarks
scattered throughout their printed works that one can
reconstruct their political ideas.

Carra's ideology exemplifies the Kornmann group's
attempt to divorce mesmerism from Mesmer, but it really
owed much to the master. Carra even provided for the
tub and for "chain" mesmerizing, although he disputed
Mesmer's understanding of the fluid. Carra's conception
of the fluid derived from a dissenting report, somewhat
in favor of mesmerism, by A. L. Jussieu, one of the com-
missioners of the Royal Society of Medicine. Jussieu
attributed the effects of mesmerizing in part to the
"atmospheres" surrounding bodies, and Carra incor-
porated this interpretation into his own mesmerist
cosmology by positing the existence of interrelated
fluids, which penetrated the atmospheres of all persons
and substances. He put these fluids to work, providing
air, light, heat, electricity, and fire (all of which he ex-
plained by new theories) and associated them with a
general fluid, like Mesmer's, which acted as an inter-
mediary between a universal ether and the particular
atmosphere of all bodies, large and small.

A RADICAL POLITICAL THEORY

Obscure as it was, Carra's atmosphere theory pro-
vided him with a seemingly scientific approach to politics.
Moral causes, like unjust legislation, disrupted one's
atmosphere and hence one's health, just as physical
causes produced sickness; and conversely, physical
causes could produce moral effects, even on a broad
scale. "The same effects take place, every moment, in
society; and one has not yet ventured to acknowledge
their importance, I believe, because one has not yet
sufficiently connected the moral to the physical/' During
the Revolution, Carra traced his republican political
views to a prophecy in his Nouveaux principes de physique
(1781-1782) that France would become a republic, "be-
cause the great physical system of the universe, which
governs the moral and political affairs of the human race,
is itself a veritable republic." By 1787 he unhesitatingly
linked virtue and vice with the "mechanism of the uni-
verse" (see p. 19), and he considered politics and med-
icine to be so intimately related that both physical and
social ills could be cured by a combination of cold baths,
head-washing, dieting, and philosophical books. He
claimed that ancient prophets and wizards practiced a
primitive mesmerism and that the Delphic Oracle's
predictions and support of Lycurgus' legislation were
a form of political somnambulism.

Carra generally restricted his main mesmerist work,
Examen physique du magnetisme animal (1785), to the-
orizing about atmospheric fluids, but he indicated the
political side to his theories by announcing that mes-
merism had helped inaugurate the third of the three stages
in history that he had outlined in his Esprit de la morale

Nicolas Bergasse, Mesmer's most energetic disciple and propa-
gandist. Bergasse lectured on mesmerist theory to neophytes in
the Society of Universal Harmony. After a split in the society,
he led the group of radicals who saw a Rousseauist political
message in mesmerism.

A RADICAL POLITICAL THEORY 109

A RADICAL POLITICAL THEORY

et de la philosophie (1777). In this anonymous work, Carra
declaimed against nobles and kings and hailed the out-
break of the American Revolution as a victory for Rous-
seau's principle of popular sovereignty. He prophesied
that this principle would rule the world in the third and
final stage of history, the stage of "positive natural right"
(droit naturel postif), which he described in a parable
about a king and a shepherd on a desert island. "The
one is no longer a king; the other is always a shepherd;
or rather they are no longer anything but two men in
the true state of equality, two friends in the true state
of society. The political difference has disappeared . . .
Nature, equality, have reclaimed all their rights ... It
is up to you, my fellow men, my brothers, to direct the
working of your particular will according to this model,
in order to coordinate it with the production of the general
good." Carra believed that the physico-moral forces of
the universe would bring about this revolution, and by
1785 he was convinced that they had begun their work.
He detected an impending apocalypse in the extra-
ordinary weather of the mid-1780's. Heavy fogs, an
earthquake, and a volcanic eruption had disturbed various
parts of Europe in the summer of 1783; the winter of
1783-84 was extremely severe (the Journal de Physique
reported below-freezing temperatures for 69 days and
numerous deaths from exposure and marauding wolves),
and it was followed by catastrophic floods during the
spring. This was enough for Carra; he announced the
imminent outbreak of the mesmerist revolution in 1785.
"The entire globe seems to be preparing itself, by a pro-
nounced upheaval in the course of the seasons, for
physical changes ... In societies the masses are agitating
more than ever to disentangle at last the chaos of their
morals and their legislation." Carra's mesmerist ideas
hardly added up to a coherent philosophy, but they
illustrate the curious combination of scientific and polit-

A RADICAL POLITICAL THEORY

ical extremism that went into the making of several
revolutionaries. 1

Other radical mesmerists certainly held similar ideas.
Adrien Duport, for example, mixed physics, occultism,
and politics in his mesmerist theories, according to the
Abbe Sieves. "He pretended then to elevate the doctrine
of animal magnetism to the highest degree of illumina-
tion; he saw everything in it: medicine, ethics, political
economy, philosophy, astronomy, the past, the present
at all distances and even the future; all this filled only a
small part of his vast mesmeric vision." 2 The Rolands and
their future Girondist colleague Francois Lanthenas went
through a mesmerist phase before the Revolution. Al-
though nothing indicates they associated mesmerism
with political theory, they may have shared the belief
expressed by their friend Brissot in 1791: "Liberty ... is
the principle of health." Impressed by the healthiness of
the Americans he had met during a trip to the United
States in 1788, Brissot jumped to a typically extravagant
conclusion. "There will, no doubt, come a day when one

1. Jussieu published his findings separately as Rapport de I'un des
commissaires charges par le Roi de Vexamen du magnetisme animal (Paris,
1784). The quotations come from Carra's Examen physique du magnetisme
animal . . . (London, 1785), pp. 80-81; Precis de defense de Carra . . .
(Year II), p. 49; Histoire de Vancienne Grece . . . (Paris, 1787-1788; this is
Carra's six-volume translation of John Gillies' history, to which he
added extensive notes on anything that interested him — thus the
"mecanisme de l'univers," II, 471, and the analysis of the Delphic
Oracle, I, 176); Systeme de la raison . . . (London, 1782), p. 35 (his pre-
scription for social-physical ills is on p. 124, and related declamations
are on pp. 56-68, 177, 220-224); the final quotation is from his Examen
physique, p. 3. Carra was skeptical, however, about Bergasse's claim
that mesmerism could produce drastic political reforms (ibid., p. 8),
as he believed they would come from physical causes like seasonal and
astronomical influences. For attitudes toward the unusual weather of the
mid-1780's, see Journal de Physique, December 1784, pp. 455-466; Journal
de Bruxelles, June 19, 1784, pp. 125-133; and Journal de Paris, April 6,
1784, pp. 428-429, which explained that the unequal distribution of
the electric and phlogistic fluids had prepared "la convulsion du globe."

2. Abbe Sieves, Notice sur la vie de Sieyes . . . (Switzerland, 1795),
pp. 15-16.

A RADICAL POLITICAL THEORY

will be convinced that the great principle of physical
health is the equality of all beings and the independence
of opinions and wills." But Brissot never incorporated
mesmerism into a systematic political theory. The only
mesmerist theoretician who left a thorough record of
his ideas was Nicolas Bergasse, Mesmer's high priest
before the founding of the Kornmann group. It was
Bergasse, not Mesmer, who lectured to neophytes in the
Society of Harmony; Bergasse wrote a textbook for them
to study; he composed statements of dogma to refute
schismatics in Mesmer's name; and he published the
mesmerist Summa Theologica, his Considerations sur le
magnetisme animal (1784). One must turn to Bergasse's
works, therefore, for the most important political version
of mesmerism, assuming that Bergasse's friends agreed
with him in a general way, as Brissot indicated in his
attack on academicians: "When the most fervent apostle
of mesmerism, M. Bergasse, pulverized your report in
his profound Considerations, you said, 'He is strong-minded
but too enthusiastic/" Brissot denounced the academi-
cians for attempting to "crush the man with an indepen-
dent spirit. But one praises such a man by describing him
in this way, for to say that a man is enthusiastic is to say
that his ideas fly beyond the range of ordinary ideas,
that he has civic virtues under a corrupt government,
charity among barbarians, respect for the rights of man
under despotism . . . And this, in truth, is the portrait
of M. Bergasse." 3

Like Carra, Bergasse built his mesmerist system on
the popular contemporary theory of reciprocal moral and
physical causality, which formed a central theme in many

3. On the mesmerism of Lanthenas and the Rolands, see the letters
of Mme. Roland to her husband of May 10-15, 16, and 21, 1784, in
Lettres de Madame Roland, ed. Claude Perroud (Paris, 1900-1902), I,
405-406, 408, and 427. The quotations are from J. -P. Brissot, Nouveau
voyage dans les Etats-Unis de I'Amerique septentrionale, fait en 1788 (Paris,
1791), II, 143 and 133-134; J. -P. Brissot, Un mot a I'oreille des academiciens
de Paris, p. 14.

A RADICAL POLITICAL THEORY 113

mesmerist writings, particularly after the report of the
royal commission. The report had discredited mesmerism
by attributing its physical effects, such as convulsions,
to a "moral" faculty, the imagination, and Bailly had
told the Academy of Sciences that the commission's
investigation had promoted "a new science, that of the
influence of the moral on the physical." Mesmerists turned
Bailly's analysis against him by hailing animal mag-
netism as this very new science. Antoine Servan rejoiced,
"What! those physical and moral phenomena that I
admire every day without understanding are caused by
the same agent . . ." and concluded, "All beings are
therefore my brothers, and nature is simply our common
mother!" 4

Bergasse agreed that nature governed both the moral
and physical worlds, because he believed that mes-
merist fluid — "the conservative action of nature" faction
conservatrice de la nature) — operated as both a physical
and moral force. He developed this idea by drawing on
contemporary concepts of natural law as both a physical
and normative order. In two mesmerist lectures that
have survived in his papers, he explained that nature
intended her laws to maintain "a constant and durable
harmony," the natural state of the fluid in regulating rela-
tions among inanimate bodies and among men. Dis-
harmony, or sickness, had moral as well as physical

4. J.-S. Bailly, Expose des experiences qui ont ete faites pour I'examen
du magnetisme animal . . . (1784), quotation from p. 11; (Bailly), Rapport
des. commissaircs charges par le Roi de I'examen du magnetisme animal
(Paris, 1784), esp. p. 48; A.-J.-M. Servan, Doutes d'un provincial . . .
(Lyons, 1784), pp. 82-83. Court de Gebelin also exulted to learn from
Mesmer that "la Nature . . . operait dans le moral de la meme maniere
que dans le physilque" (Lettre de lauteur du Monde Primitif . . . [Paris,
1784], p. 16). See also Pierre Thouvenel, Memoire physique et medicinal . . .
(London, 1784), p. 34, and Charles Deslon, Observations sur les deux rap-
ports de MM. les commissaires . . . (1784), p. 20. An example of the common
theorizing about moral and physical causality in the eighteenth century
is Montesquieu's Essai sur les causes, an important source for De I'esprit
des his (see Robert Shackleton, Montesquieu: A Critical Biography [Oxford,
1961], pp. 314-319).

A RADICAL POLITICAL THEORY

causes; indeed, virtue was a necessity for good health,
and even wicked thoughts could make one ill. The
conscience was a physical organ "that is united by
numerous, slender threads to all points in the universe . . .
It is by this organ that we put ourselves in harmony with
nature." Good was harmony, evil disharmony in both a
physical and moral sense, for Bergasse had found in mes-
merism "a morality issuing from the world's general
physics" (une morale emanee de la physique generale
du monde). He adopted terms like "artificial moral mag-
netism" and "artificial moral electricity" to describe the
physico-moral forces that operated in society and in
politics as well as within individuals and among planets.
The peaceful flow of the fluid would produce a blissfully
healthy, happy, and justly organized France. Bergasse
told the members of the Society of Harmony, whose name
suggested this ideal, that mesmerism provided "simple
rules for judging the institutions to which we are enslaved,
certain principles for establishing the legislation appro-
priate for man in all given circumstances." The Societies
of Harmony devoted themselves to the "contemplation
of the harmony of the universe" and the "knowledge
of the laws of nature." Their emblem elaborated their
parallel physical and moral objectives (for example, "uni-
versal physics" and "universal justice") and pledged the
societies to perform parallel practical activities — to mes-
merize the sick back to health and also to "prevent injus-
tice." It listed "social virtues" of a bourgeois nature
("frugality," "honesty," and "correctness in conduct"),
and it advocated the natural rights of man, "security,
liberty, property." 5

Bergasse used his concept of natural law as a means
of criticizing French society but not of edging God out

5. Bergasse's lectures, part of which are printed in Appendix 4,
are in his manuscripts at the Chateau de Villiers, Villiers, Loir-et-Cher.
The society's emblem is reproduced in Appendix 5.

A RADICAL POLITICAL THEORY

of the cosmos; far from it, he felt compelled to attribute
the omnipresent fluid's action to a divine intelligence.
"Nothing better agrees with the notions we have formed
of a Supreme Being, nothing proves more his profound
wisdom, than the idea of the world being formed as the
result of a single idea, moved by a single law." This
common argument for theism from design owed some-
thing to Descartes, despite the Newtonian pose of most
mesmerist writing. In fact, some mesmerists criticized
Newton for rejecting Descartes' "subtle matter," which
they interpreted as an interplanetary mesmeric fluid,
and they contradicted Newton's version of gravity by
proclaiming, "Gravity is an occult virtue, a property
inhering, no one knows how, in matter." Bergasse began
his secret notebook for neophytes with a Cartesian
formula: "There exists one uncreated principle: God.
There exist in Nature two created principles: matter and
movement." This credo, which was reproduced in many
mesmerist works, is interesting because it was written
in symbols instead of words. Mesmerists regarded the
notebook as "a book of doctrine written in mystical
characters." Its cabalistic signs communicated meaning
beyond the reach of words; they transmitted the pure
doctrine as Mesmer had received it from Nature during a
three-month retreat in the wilderness. "Animal mag-
netism, in M. Mesmer's hands, seems to be nothing other
than Nature herself," Deslon observed. Another mesmerist
called if'the demonstrated presence of God," and in
reproducing Bergasse's credo, he proclaimed the magic
power of the number three and drew a triangle with the
word "Dieu" at the top and "la matiere" and "le mouve-
ment" at the sides. This belief in the occult power of
symbols and numbers derived from the vogue of illumin-
ism and religious mysticism, which apparently rep-
resented a reaction during the last years of the Ancien
Regime against the colder, sometimes atheistic rationalism

A RADICAL POLITICAL THEORY

of the earlier part of the century. In 1786 the Society of
Harmony required its members to swear belief in God and
the immortality of the soul, and it excluded "creatures
so deprived of sense as to be materialists. " Corberon
remarked in his notes on a lecture by Bergasse, "It fol-
lows from this that movement is communicated by God,
which is incontestable and an answer equally simple and
strong to atheism." 6

The mesmerists' mystical idea of nature evoked
Rousseau, particularly as they often contrasted prim-
itive nature with the decadence of modern society. They
sometimes maintained that mesmerism offered a return
to the "natural" medicine of Hippocrates or to the science
of some forgotten primitive people. This theory especially
pleased the followers of Court de Gebelin, the philosopher
who searched ancient languages for traces of a lost prim-
itive science. Gebelin himself adopted it in a letter he
sent to his subscribers in place of the ninth volume of
his Monde primitif in 1783. In the course of an impassioned
defense of animal magnetism, he announced that Mes-
mer had helped him recover both his shattered health
and the trail of his primitive science, which was a form
of mesmerism. Gebelin joined the Society of Harmony,

6. Nicolas Bergasse, Considerations sur le magnetisme animal (The
Hague, 1784), p. 43; Galart de Montjoie, Lettre sur le magnetisme animal
. . . (Paris, 1784), p. 25; Systeme raisonne du magnetisme universel . . .
(1786), pp. iii, 110, 121; Charles Deslon, Observations sur le magnetisme
animal (London, 1784), p. 101; Nouvelle decouverte sur le magnetisme an-
imal . . . , pp. 1, 14; Corberon's journal, Bibliotheque municipals Avignon,
ms 3059, entry for April 7, 1784. Bergasse's notebook, entitled Theorie
du monde et des etres organises, with a key for decoding it, is in the
Bibliotheque Nationale, 4° Tb 62.1 (17); a sample page is reproduced
in Appendix 5. It was reprinted in modified form by Caullet de Veau-
morel as Aphorismes de M. Mesmer . . . (1785). Several mesmerists testified
to Bergasse's authorship of the notebook, including Bergasse himself:
Observations de M. Bergasse sur un ecrit du Docteur Mesmer . . . (London,
1785), p. 25. On the persistent Cartesian strain in French eighteenth-
century science, see Aram Vartanian, Diderot and Descartes: A Study of
Scientific Naturalism in the Enlightenment (Princeton, 1953).

A RADICAL POLITICAL THEORY 117

moved into the Hotel de Coigny with Mesmer, and be-
came one of his most effective proselytizers — until he
died at a mesmerist tub a year later. Mesmer himself
presented his theory as "the remnant of a primitively
recognized truth/' which he had discovered in an attempt
to commune with nature by fleeing society. He had
wandered alone in a forest for three months like a Rous-
seauite savage: "I felt closer to nature there . . . O nature,
I cried out in those paroxysms, what do you want of me?"
In this inspired state, he had managed to erase from his
mind all ideas acquired from society, to think without
using words (which Rousseau had shown to be social
artifices), and to imbibe the pure philosophy of nature.
He had arrived in Paris like a natural man, stupefied
at the prejudices of civilization, and had vowed to "pass
on to humanity, in all the purity that I had received from
Nature, the inestimable benefaction that I had in hand." 7
The correlation between the ideas of Gebelin and
Mesmer indicates the way in which Bergasse applied this
philosophy of nature. He attacked the moral and political
standards of his time by contrasting modern depravity
with primitive virtue and health. This technique also
suggested Rousseau's condemnation of modern society,
as the Abbe le Gros emphasized in a book comparing the
works of Rousseau and Gebelin. "They endlessly insisted
upon the happiness of the earliest ages, upon the preju-
dices, the corruption of the present time, upon the neces-
sity of a revolution, of a general reform." Bergasse not
only read and admired Rousseau; he sought him out in

7. Elie de la Poterie, Examen de la doctrine d'Hippocrate . . . (Brest,
1785); De la philosophie corpusculaire . . . (Paris, 1785); Court de Gebelin,
lettre de Vauteur du Monde Primitif; F. A. Mesmer, Precis historique des
faits relatifs au magnetisme animal . . . (London, 1781), pp. 20-25. Another
mesmerist extolled 'Tignorance primitive" and advocated mesmerism
as a means of returning to "l'etat pur de la nature" and escaping from
"le torrent des institutions sociales" (Nouvelle decouverte sur le magne-
tisme animal, pp. 4-5).

A RADICAL POLITICAL THEORY

person and directed their conversation toward a favorite
subject. "Our talk was more solemn when he threw him-
self into a discussion of morality and of the present con-
stitution of governments . . . We are on the brink of a
great revolution, he added." Bergasse even considered
himself a kind of mesmerist Rousseau, as he indicated in
a letter to his fiancee, Perpetue du Petit-Thouars: "You
are not the first who has noted some resemblance between
me and your good friend Jean-Jacques. However, there
are some principles that he did not know and that would
have made him less unhappy." Unlike the other French-
men who identified themselves with Jean-Jacques after
tearful readings of La Nouvelle Heloise or the Confessions,
Bergasse incorporated Rousseau's disparate ideas into
a system, and so retained the moral fervor of the master
while abandoning some of his awkward axioms, like the
contractual origin of society. Bergasse believed that man
was a naturally social creature and that a truly natural
and primitive society must have been created coevally
with man. Primitive society, like the original cosmos,
was a divine creation ruled by perfect harmony; it was a
normative order to which France should return. "The
word society must not be taken to mean society as it
exists now . . . but the society that ought to exist, natural
society, the one that results from the relations that our
own natures, when well ordered, must produce . . . The
guiding rule of society is harmony." Bailly later recalled
that when he and Bergasse tried to prepare a constitution
for revolutionary France in the Constitutional Committee
of the National Assembly, "M. Bergasse, in order to speak
of the constitution and of the rights of man, made us go
back to the rule of Nature, to the state of savagery." 8

8. Abbe Le Gros, Analyse des ouvrages de /.-/. Rousseau de Geneve
et de M. Court de Gebelin, auteur du Monde Primitif (Geneva and Paris,
1785), p. 5; letter from Bergasse to his friend Rambaud de Vallieres,
cited in Louis Bergasse, Un defenseur des principes traditionnels sous

A RADICAL POLITICAL THEORY

Having defined his ideal of primitive, harmonious
society, Bergasse searched in mesmerist doctrine for the
means of restoring it; and like Rousseau, he came up with
a theory of education, which also served as a weapon for
attacking contemporary society. Bergasse felt that Rous-
seau had pointed the way to an educational theory that
would regenerate society. Jean-Jacques had rightly
stressed the interaction of physical and moral forces upon
children's development, but he had lacked the key to
the understanding of these forces — mesmerism. Bergasse
showed that the action of mesmerist fluid determined the
development of children in two ways: through the direct
influence of other beings, and indirectly through the
transmission of sensations from which children built
ideas.

Bergasse explained that all bodies, men and planets
alike, influenced each other by setting the fluid in motion.
The more regular and powerful influence of the planets
provided him with a scientific version of astrology, and
the variable influences among men suggested a scientific
explanation of Rousseau's theory of pity or empathy, the
basis of the social virtues. One could not control the effect
of the stars upon a child (although Mesmer later claimed
to have mesmerized the sun), but one could surround him
with the right sort of people. These would have constitu-
tions with which he could empathize; that is, their fluid
would flow evenly into him, communicating their health

la Revolution, Nicolas Bergasse (Paris, 1910), p. 24; letter from Bergasse
to Perpetue du Petit-Thouars, dated "ce 21" (1791?), in his papers at
Villiers; Bergasse's notebook, Theorie du Monde, "troisieme partie."
On his disagreement with the contract theory, see Bergasse, Memoire
sur une question d' adulter e . . . (1787), pp. 75-76, 80. Bergasse, Brissot,
and Carra knew and admired Gebelin and cited his Monde Primitif . . .
(Paris, 1787-1789; 1 ed., 1773-1782), which contains some strong political
views, in spite of its royal backing (e.g., Gebelin's remark on 'Tharmonie
primitive" in I, 87, and his "Vue generate" in VIII). Bailly's remark is
in Memoires de Bailhj . . . ed. S. A. Berville and Barriere (Paris, 1821), I,
299.

A RADICAL POLITICAL THEORY

and virtue, destroying all obstacles to harmony. This
theory also held hope for treating sick and wicked adults,
for mesmerists cured all forms of degeneration by placing
themselves "en rapport" with a patient and subjecting
him to the forceful flow of their salubrious fluid. Since
"morals [les moeurs] in general result from the relations
among men," such treatment promised the ultimate moral
regeneration of the nation. "Any change, any alteration
of our physical constitution thus produces infallibly a
change, an alteration in our moral constitution. There-
fore, it suffices to purify or corrupt the physical order of
things in a nation in order to produce a revolution in its
morals." As "morals are the cement of the political
edifice," this moral revolution would transform political
institutions. 9

A vivid sense of the obstacles to harmony within
France prevented Bergasse from expecting a quick arrival
of the mesmerist millennium. He recommended that
mesmerists concentrate on developing virtues in children,
whose minds had not been completely scarred by a de-
praved society. As a good empiricist, Rousseau had
shown that children's moral development depended
upon the sensations they received, but he had not known
the crucial truth revealed by mesmerism — that sensations
were transmitted by means of Mesmer's all-purpose fluid.
This truth provided a scientific basis for Rousseau's
theory about the pernicious effects of the arts. Man
enjoyed good health and morals in natural society because
his primitive arts did not present too many sensations
to his "sensibility." His moral decline began at the

9. Bergasse, Considerations, pp. 78-79, 84; Bergasse, Lettre d'un
medecin de la faculte de Paris . . . (The Hague, 1781), p. 54. These two
works, along with Bergasse's notebook, Theorie du monde, and his
Dialogue entre nn docteur . . . et un homme de bon sens . . . (1784), as well
as his papers in Villiers, supply the basis for this discussion of his
mesmerist theories.

A RADICAL POLITICAL THEORY

point where his organs became damaged by registering
the jarring impressions of highly developed arts. Luxury,
gluttony, debauchery, the whole gamut of sensations of-
fered by the modern French way of life had produced
disharmony in men and corrupted their morals. More-
over, political institutions buttressed this way of life,
and so "we owe almost all the physical ailments that
consume us to our institutions." Bergasse projected a
reformation of the arts, but he subordinated this task
to the more pressing need of regenerating French morals
and politics. 10

"We have lost almost all connection with nature,"
Bergasse wailed in a declamation against the arts, morals,
and politics of modern France. "The child born today,
whose constitution has been modified by the customs . . .
of society throughout several centuries, always must
carry within him seeds of depravity, whether considerable
or not." This depravity had eaten away the natural
physico-moral strength of the classes most exposed to
the arts and artificiality of civilization. The common
people, however, retained some of their primitive virtue
and were therefore healthier and easier to cure when
sick. A vaguely democratic tone existed in the call Ber-
gasse issued in Mesmer's name to mobilize the virtue of
peasants and country curates: "It is especially in the
country and in the most indigent and least depraved class
of society that my discovery will bear fruit. It is easy there
to place man again under the rule of Nature's conservative
laws." And Bergasse repeated in his Considerations,
"The common man, the man who lives in the fields,
recovers quicker and better, when he is sick, than the
worldly man." Bergasse believed that the more civilized
classes lived in such an advanced stage of depravity that
their children could not regain health and virtue as the

10. Quotation from Lettre d'un medecin, p. 51.

A RADICAL POLITICAL THEORY

peasants did, merely by being exposed to nature. It was
necessary to "double . . . the energy of nature herself
by mesmerizing. Mesmer cured Kornmann's son of partial
blindness by making him spend hours at the tub, which
became the focal point of his education. Consequently,
he developed as if he were Rousseau's Emile. "In harmony
with himself, with everything around him, he develops
within nature — if this expression, the only suitable one
here, be permitted — like a shrub that extends its vigorous
fibers in a fecund, workable soil/' 11

Kornmann's nonmesmerist wife, however, had fallen
prey to the aristocratic morality of the "gens en place"
(men in power), who had seduced her and destroyed
her ties with her family. It was through the intimate
mesmeric "rapports" within the family that Bergasse
hoped to regenerate France, and so Kornmann's adultery
suit against his wife from 1787 to 1789 furnished Bergasse
with material for moralistic declamations that, in effect,
put the Ancien Regime on trial. In a series of radical
pamphlets disguised as legal "memoires," Bergasse con-
strued Mme. Kornmann's degradation into a parable of
the corruptness of French government. He pictured her
being tucked into her love nests by the head of the
Parisian police (the same Jean-Pierre Lenoir who had
alerted the government to the dangers of mesmerism)
while the evil spirits of Versailles lurked lecherously
in the background, and he elaborated this picture in hun-
dreds of sensational details, which brought out his main
theme: the depraved "gens en place" were using their
positions to obliterate the "rapports" of French families.
It was the conclusion that Bergasse had reached in his
mesmerist writings, but now he gave it life by adopting

11. Bergasse, Considerations, pp. 63-65, 127; Mesmer's letter, written
by Bergasse, in journal de Paris, January 16, 1785, pp. 66-67; Detail des
cures operees a Buzancy, pres Soissons, par le magnetisme animal (Soissons,
1784), p. 42.

A RADICAL POLITICAL THEORY

a sentimental style. His memoires read like romantic
novels. Kornmann, their hero, suffered as an archetypal
martyr of despotism, and his example stood as a warning
that any honest bourgeois might share his fate. Bergasse's
memoires provided perhaps the most effective barrage of
radical propaganda during the prerevolution. They were
actually rented and passed around, page by page, in the
cafes of the Palais Royal, and Bergasse aimed the last and
most explosive of them directly at the ministers, who,
in the summer of 1788, were attempting to crush the
parlements and to prevent the calling of the Estates
General. He demanded the dismissal of the Brienne
ministry in an open letter to the king, which appeared
on August 8, 1788, and then he fled the country. After
the ministry's fall, he returned as a national hero and
went on to become a leading member of the Estates
General. 12

In the mid 1780's — before such direct political agita-
tion appeared to be remotely possible — Bergasse con-
centrated on a more theoretical issue: how would the
mesmerized natural man, the young Kornmann, for
example, behave in the depraved society of France?
Would he not seek "the primitive independence in which
Nature made us to be born?" Doctors sensed this danger,
Bergasse explained, and therefore they championed their
lethal practices as "a means of enervating the human
race, of reducing it to the point of having only enough
strength to bear docilely the yoke of social institutions."
In persecuting mesmerism, doctors served not only their

12. For a detailed account of the Kornmann Affair, see Robert
Darnton, "Trends in Radical Propaganda on the Eve of the French
Revolution (1782-1788)" (D. Phil, diss., Oxford University, 1964). The
most important of Bergasse's legal "memoires" or "factums" were:
Memoire pour le sieur Bergasse dans la cause du sieur Kornmann . . . (1788);
Observations du sieur Bergasse sur I'ecrit du sieur de Beaumarchais . . .
(1788); and Memoire sur une question d'adultere . . . (1787).

124 A RADICAL POLITICAL THEORY

own interests but also those of the men at the top of the
institutions that would collapse in a regenerated, mes-
merized France. Bergasse considered medicine "an
institution that belongs just as much to politics as to
nature/' and threatened, writing in the person of an anti-
mesmerist doctor: "If by chance animal magnetism really
existed ... I ask you, sir, what revolution should we not
of necessity expect? When our generation, exhausted by
ills of all kinds and by the remedies supposed to deliver
it from those ills, gives way to a vigorous, hardy genera-
tion, which knows no other laws of self-preservation than
those of Nature: what will become of our habits, our arts,
our customs? ... A more robust constitution would make
us remember independence. When, with such a constitu-
tion, we necessarily would develop new morals, how
could we possibly put up with the yoke of the institutions
that govern us today?" 13

By injecting a Rousseauist bias into a mesmerist
analysis of the physical and psychological relations
among men, Bergasse saw a way to revolutionize France.
He would reverse the historical trend of physico-moral
causality, reforming institutions by physically regen-
erating Frenchmen. Improved bodies would improve
morals, and better morals would eventually produce
political effects. To be sure, this revolution lacked blood
and thunder; it seemed to be a formula of indirect action,
involving years of sitting at mesmeric tubs, and it would
hardly satisfy the revolutionaries of 1787-1789, when
the political crisis had seized the public's attention.
Mesmerism was a great attention-seizer earlier in the
decade, however, and Bergasse used it to crystallize
radical ideas and to communicate a vulgar kind of Rous-
seauism to a reading public that had not yet awakened
to political issues. His political version of Mesmer's

13. All quotations from Bergasse, Lettre d'un medecin, pp. 57-66.

A RADICAL POLITICAL THEORY 125

innocent quackery had enough bite in it to alarm the
Parisian police, and it prepared him for a more influential
role as a radical propagandist in 1787 and 1788. Even if it
be considered merely the fossilized remains of a dead
ideology, mesmerism deserves to be rescued from its
forgotten corner in history; for it suggests how abstract
political ideas came to life for the French of the 1780's,
how the most unlikely issues could be turned into an
indictment of the Ancien Regime, and how completely
that regime had lost the allegiance of some of the dec-
ade's most influential men. In fact mesmerism had taken
such a grip on France that its place in history cannot be
limited to the 1780's; it continued to mold popular atti-
tudes and interests well into the nineteenth century.

5. FROM MESMER TO HUGO

FROM MESMER TO HUGO 127

The mesmerist movement did not die with the Ancien
Regime, but the Revolution splintered it and left it to be
assimilated in the systems of nineteenth-century philos-
ophers. The nineteenth century possessed few pure
mesmerists of the 1780 variety. It produced eclectic
thinkers, who attempted to reconstruct general theories
from the debris of the Enlightenment. They avoided
relying excessively on reason, the old edifice's unifying
principle, which had collapsed under the strain of the
Revolution. But they also often felt unable to seize on their
grandfathers' faith in order to come to grips with the
failure of their fathers' rationalism, because the En-
lightenment had dealt some damaging blows to religious
orthodoxy. Many latter-day philosophes therefore at-
tempted to develop a nonorthodox system that would
account for irrationality and for the existence of evil,
a consideration that had threatened to upset the balance
of Enlightenment thought even before the Terror put an
end to the eighteenth century. Religious mysticism pro-
vided these philosophers with the richest source of the
irrational, for it had flowed through the age of reason,
from the convulsionaries to the mesmerists, like an
underground stream. When it broke through to the surface
after 1789, it had been swollen by Swedenborgianism,
martinism, Rosicrucianism, alchemy, physiognomy, and
many other currents of spiritualism; but the mesmerist
current was one of the most powerful. To chart the main
twists and turns of its course from 1789 to about 1850
will serve to put the mesmerism of the 1780's into per-
spective and to make clear its role in the transition from
the Enlightenment to romanticism. The clusters of atti-
tudes generally attached to these two labels might be
understood better by tracing a line of thought from one
extreme — the eighteenth-century's faith in the ability
of reason to decode the laws of nature — to another — the
nineteenth century's fascination with the supernatural
and the irrational.

FROM MESMER TO HUGO

Postrevolutionary mesmerists developed their own
version of the ideas that characterized spiritualism in
general. They emphasized the interaction of physical
and moral laws of nature and typically championed
"Newtonian" theories of ethics and politics; they pro-
duced pseudoscientific analyses of light, electricity, and
other forces; they believed in a primitive natural society,
known by fragments of a primitive language, and they
held a corresponding belief in a primitive religion that
included elements of pantheism, theocracy, sabaism,
astrology, millenarianism, metempsychosis, and the
conviction that a hierarchy of spirits linked man and
God. To these ideas — the stock in trade of many spiritual-
ists — the mesmerists added their peculiar supply of
medical theories, their fluid, and their practice of somnam-
bulism, which they usually explained as a state in which
the inner sense made contact with the spiritual world,
freeing the inner man to wander through space and time
while his body remained fixed in a trance. Mesmerist
followers of Lavater spread the belief that the mind's
faculties, especially the will, could be read in one's face
and could bring others under one's influence by project-
ing fluid from the eyes; and other mesmerists grafted
many more foreign doctrines onto the theories of Mesmer
and Bergasse, for they welcomed any idea that promised
to help them in their main endeavor, to climb from the
material to the spiritual world. They began, of course,
from the most elevated point of prerevolutionary mes-
merism, where somnambulism had associated the move-
ment with martinism, Swedenborgianism, and other
forms of spiritualism.

Bergasse himself concentrated on earthly affairs for the
first nine months of 1789. He helped lead the faction that
favored making France into a conservative constitutional
monarchy. As the Revolution moved leftward, however,
he retreated into the realm of the spirit, accompanied
by the Duchesse de Bourbon, the only member of her

FROM MESMER TO HUGO 129

family — with the notable exception of her brother,
Philippe Egalite, the former Due d'Orleans — to accept
the Revolution. The duchess also shared the visions of
two of the most extraordinary mystics turned up by the
Revolution — Suzette Labrousse and Catherine Theot.
The Revolution provided Mile. Labrousse with material
for apocalyptic prophecies and declamations against the
nobility and clergy. The duchess published these in a
Journal prophetique edited by Pierre Pontard, an intriguer
who helped launch Suzette on a public career and made
sure that her prophecies followed the Jacobin line.
Suzette represented the most extreme political version of
mesmerism, but she did not neglect its medical mission.
She performed several mesmerist cures and abandoned
her treatments only in obedience to her visions, which
commanded her to make a pilgrimage by foot to Rome.
There she intended to convert the pope and was jailed
as a lunatic. Catherine Theot, "the Mother of God," had
been confined for the same reason before the Revolution.
Upon her release in 1789, when she was 83, she announced
that she would inaugurate the apocalypse by giving birth
to God. She presided at mystic services in the home of a
widow Godefroy, and she, too, became the pawn of
political intriguers. Some agents of the Committee of
General Security apparently tried to bring down Robes-
pierre in the spring of 1794 by having her dictate a letter
of congratulations to him for honoring her son in the cult
of the Supreme Being and for carrying out his mission,
which had been foretold by the prophet Ezekiel. Robes-
pierre snuffed out the plot, whose purpose apparently
was to discredit him by showing his supposed messianic
pretensions, but the incident helped to isolate him from
his colleagues on the Committee of Public Safety and thus
to prepare his downfall. It is difficult to say how much
mesmerism entered into the seances of Catherine Theot;
there must have been some elements of it, for the mystic
mesmerist companions of the Duchesse de Bourbon were

FROM MESMER TO HUGO

implicated in the affair. The duchess apparently became
a follower of Catherine under the influence of Dom Gerle,
a former prior who took up the Mother of God's cause
after abandoning Suzette Labrousse to Pierre Pontard.
Magdalene Schweizer, a devout mesmerist and friend of
the duchess and of Bergasse, later wrote that she had
become an ardent supporter of Catherine; and Bergasse
was arrested and very nearly guillotined because of his
connections with the duchess' circle of mystics. 1

The Revolution brought a reversal in Brissot's mes-
merist convictions as abrupt as the change that it made
in his fortune — in fact, the two may have been con-
nected. Perhaps Brissot turned against mesmerism be-
cause he had no more use for it once he had acquired
the power and prestige that had been denied him before
the Revolution. This denial had inspired his conversion
to mesmerism in 1785. By 1790 he had moved to the center
of affairs; and, as editor of the Patriote francois, he kept
an eye on suspicious movements beyond the circumfer-
ence of the new revolutionary orthodoxy. Thus, in
mid-1790, after joining the Comite de Recherches of the
municipality of Paris, he announced the danger of a
"contre-revolution de somnambules/' Two men had
attempted to communicate a reactionary program to the
king by means of mesmeric fluid, he reported. They had
received the message from Madame Thomassin, a som-

1. Much of this and the following account is indebted to Auguste
Viatte's fundamental work, Les Sources occultes du romantisme: illu-
minisme—theosophie, 1770-1820, 2 vols. (Paris, 1928). On the circle of
the Duchesse de Bourbon, see Lavaters Beziehungen zu Paris in den
Revolutionsjahren 1789-1795, ed. G. Finsler (Zurich, 1898), esp. pp.
23-25, and Magdalene Schweizer's letters to J. C. Lavater of December 23,
1789, and August 19, 1790, pp. 27*-30*. A good summary of the Theot
Affair is in J. M. Thompson, Robespierre (Oxford, 1935), II, 210-212.
The details of Bergasse's arrest are in his folders in the Archives Na-
tionals, W 479 and F 7 4595. The latter includes his pamphlet, Reflexions
du citoyen Bergasse sur sa translation a Paris, in which he said that he
had met Dom Gerle only once and had not seen the Duchesse de Bourbon
in four years.

FROM MESMER TO HUGO

nambulist with aristocratic connections, who had received
it herself from the Virgin Mary; and they had attempted
to "imprint" it mesmerically on the king's mind at Saint
Cloud, where they were arrested — much to their surprise,
as they had believed themselves invisible. In another
seance, Madame Thomassin had dictated a memoir on a
counterrevolutionary plot involving the navies of England
and Spain, the Due d'Orleans, Mirabeau, the Due de
Liancourt, and Alexandre and Charles Lameth. Their
confederation, as predicted by Nostradamus, would
inaugurate the apocalypse, since "the political revolution
of France is purely the initiation of a religious, moral
and political revolution, universal throughout the earth."
Brissot found these "dangerous ideas, which tend toward
a counterrevolution" serious enough to warrant attack.
His own experience with somnambulism may have made
him genuinely afraid of a Feuillant millennium, but the
tone of his attacks suggested political rather than mystical
fear. He ridiculed mesmerist illuminism just as its oppo-
nents had done, much to his indignation, before the
Revolution. Now Brissot wrote like an inverted Barruel:
"The sects of illuminists are increasing instead of dimin-
ishing; is this not perhaps a result of France's political
circumstances, which rally to their mysterious doctrine
the men who are unhappy with the new order of things
and who hope to find in it the means for destroying
[this new order]?" 2

A mad Welshman named James Tilly Matthews gave
a final twist to the political messages transmitted by

2. J. -P. Brissot, Rapport sur I 'affaire de MM. Dhosier et Petit-Jean,
reprinted in La Revolution francaise (1882), II, 593-618; all quotations
from pp. 600, 613, 594. For the details of this affair and the polemics it
aroused, see also Stanislas de Clermont-Tonnerre, Nouvelles observa-
tions sur ies comites des recherches (Paris, 1790); Brissot, /. P. Brissot,
ntcmbrc du comite de recherches de la nmnicipalite a Stanislas Clermont . . .
(Paris, 1790); Brissot, Replique de J, P. Brissot a Stanislas Clermont ... (Paris,
1790); and the articles by Brissot in his Patriote francois of July 3 and 5
and August 2 and 6, 1790.

132 FROM MESMER TO HUGO

Mesmer's fluid during the Revolution. Matthews received
proposals for an Anglo-French peace sent fluidically to
him in Paris by the British government in 1794. For a
while his project received serious consideration by the
Committee of Public Safety; but the Committee finally
decided to jail him — on the grounds of suspected Danton-
ism, however, not false credentials. 3

Mesmerism exerted a more pervasive though less
obvious influence on the Revolution through the Cercle
Social, an association of mystic revolutionaries who
hoped to establish a Universal Confederation of Friends
of the Truth with a masonic organization. The ideology
of the Cercle Social derived from a strain of occultism
expressed most fully by Restif de la Bretonne, the novelist
famous as the "Rousseau du ruisseau" (Rousseau of the
gutter). Restif's baroque imagination produced a cos-
mology made up of animal planets that produced life by
copulation; pythagorean spirits that evolved with each
incarnation through a hierarchy of stones, plants, animals,
and creatures inhabiting countless worlds of countless
solar systems; and a pantheistic god who endlessly created
universes by a process of crystallization and then de-
stroyed them by absorption in the sun, the brain of the
universal "Great Animal/' Restif lubricated this animal-
istic, sexual cosmos with "intellectual fluid" that, like
Mesmer's fluid, acted as the intermediary between God
and man's internal sense. "God is the material and
intellectual brain of the single great animal, of the All,
whose intelligence is an actual fluid, like light, but much
less dense, as it does not touch any of our external senses
and acts only upon the inner sense." Restif claimed to
have received his theories from Nature, not from Mesmer
or anyone else, except perhaps Mirabeau, whose similar

3. David Williams, "Un document inedit sur la Gironde," Annates
historiques de la Revolution francaise, XV (1938), 430-431.

FROM MESMER TO HUGO

treatise on "high physics," now apparently lost, Restif
summarized in La Philosophic de Monsieur Nicolas. 4

Whatever their source, Restif's ideas and others akin
to mesmerism emerged in La Bouche de fer, the organ of
the Cercle Social, which was produced by Restif's friend,
Nicolas de Bonneville. Here subscribers could read about
the animal planets, the transmigration of souls, the prim-
itive religion and language, and, also, universal har-
mony. They were informed that the Cercle Social intended
"to propagate at last the principles of that divine har-
mony that must make Nature and Society agree." Bon-
neville constantly insisted on the interaction of physical
and moral law; and he intended his scientific metaphors
to be taken literally. Thus he italicized his description of
nature's fundamental principles: "Their hidden, funda-
mental moving force will teach you that the pure and
free word, the burning image of truth, will be able to
enlighten everything by its active heat, to magnetize
everything by its gravitational power, to electrify excellent
conductors, to organize men, nations and the universe."
Bonneville scrambled such occult politico-scientific ideas,
in poetry and prose, throughout his works. He drew
heavily on the pseudoscientific trends of the 1780's and
owed much to mesmerism. Although he rarely referred
to Mesmer, he used the. Cercle Social to promote Carra's
works, which had much in common with his own, and
he was identified with the martinists and somnambu-
lists by La Harpe. Bonneville even indicated a mesmerist
conviction that mirrors and music reinforced the fluid's
action on the internal sense. He referred to man as an
"animated mirror of nature" (miroir anime de la nature)

4. Restif de la Bretonne, Monsieur Nicolas ou le coeur humain devoile
(Paris, 1959), vols. V and VI, which contain La Philosophie de Monsieur
Nicolas; quotations from V, 278-279. Restif was a close friend of L.-S.
Mercier, who became an advocate of mesmerism and a collaborator of
Carra's.

FROM MESMER TO HUGO

and described the state of mystic illumination in terms
that could have been used by Bergasse: "What is that
divine harp, in the hands of nature's God, whose universal
cords, attached to all hearts, ceaselessly bind and rebind
them? It is truth. All nations hark to the feeblest sounds
that leave it, everything senses the divine influence of
the universal harmony." 5

The political ideas of Bonneville and the Abbe Claude
Fauchet, who founded the Cercle Social with him, derived
from well-known authors like Rousseau and Mably, but
they also showed kinship with Carra's and Court de
Gebelin's ideal of primitive, natural society. Bonneville
and Fauchet preached the communism of primitive
Christians and primitives in general (whom they took to
be naturally sociable, just as Bergasse had done in criti-
cizing Rousseau). They demanded the redistribution of
property by means of an agrarian law and strict limits on
inheritances. Restif himself published a communist
manifesto in La Philosophic de Monsieur Nicolas and pos-
sibly wrote articles for the Cercle Social, but he seems
rarely to have gone beyond the role of a timid and occa-
sionally outraged observer of the Revolution. Bonneville
and Fauchet, however, pursued an extreme, pro-Cordelier
and anti-Jacobin line; and during the first sessions of
the Cercle Social in October 1790 they preached their
mystic political doctrines to audiences of several thousand,
including Brissot, Paine, Condorcet, Sieves, Desmoulins,
Mme. Roland, and other revolutionary leaders. The Cercle
Social broke up during the crisis of the summer of 1791,
and its leaders aligned themselves solidly with the
Girondists during the next few months. Bonneville
collaborated with Brissot, Claviere, and Condorcet in the
Chronique du mois, a Girondist paper, and Fauchet went

5. La Bouche de fer, October 1790, p. 21; Nicolas de Bonneville,
De I' esprit des religions (Paris, 1791), pp. 189-190, 75, 152. For the ref-
erence to Carra, see Cercle Social (Paris, 1790), pp. 353-360; and for
La Harpe's remark, see Mercure de France, December 25, 1790, p. 119.

FROM MESMER TO HUGO

to the guillotine with the nineteen other Girondist leaders
on October 31, 1793. 6

The communist ideas of Fauchet and Bonneville
might have led them to the extreme left of the Revolu-
tion, but their penchant for communication with spirits,
fraternal organizations, and grand oratory aligned
them with Roland and Brissot. They believed in Utopian
communism, a communism of universal harmony. Al-
though they might have accepted Marat's theories of
fire and light, they could not follow him into the streets
and into the sewers, and their attitudes typified those of
the other Girondists. Charles Nodier's version of the
Girondist Last Supper in the Conciergerie stresses Carra's
influence, by means of the German mesmerist-illuminist
Dr. Andre Seiffert, on the philosophy of Bonneville and
of Nodier himself, who also dabbled in mesmerism, and
it gives a vivid picture of Carra talking cosmology to
Brissot before facing the guillotine. It is a fictional ver-
sion, but its emphasis on the Girondists' theatrical
speeches and romantic visions captures the spirit of the
Revolution at its most illuministic if not enlightened
stage. 7

The mesmerist episodes of the Revolution rep-
resented only occasional flare-ups of a movement dis-
sipated by emigration and social upheaval. During the
Napoleonic and Restoration periods the mesmerists came
together again, and the movement swelled and gained

6. Restif produced pamphlets attacking the Abbe Maury for Mira-
beau, according to Frantz Funck-Brentano, Restif de la Bretonne: portraits
et documents inedits (Paris, 1928), p. 372. These pamphlets show kinship
with the articles in Cercle Social, pp. 175-176 and 182-184. See also
Jules Charrier, Claude Fauchet, eveque constitutionnel du Calvados, depute
a Y Assemble e Legislative et a la Convention (1744-1795) (Paris, 1909),
and Philippe Le Harivel, Nicolas de Bonneville, pre-romantique et revolu-
twnnaire, 1760-1828 (Strasbourg, 1923).

7. Charles Nodier, Le Dernier banquet des Girondins, in Souvenirs
de la Revolution et de I'Empire (Paris, 1850), I, 179-285.

136 FROM MESMER TO HUGO

momentum until once more it expressed the outlook of
many literate Frenchmen. But the Revolution had changed
its course, as can be seen in the spiritualist doctrine of
P. S. Dupont de Nemours. There hardly seems a less
likely candidate for conversion to spiritualism than
Dupont, the clear-headed, physiocratic friend of Turgot
and Lavoisier. Indeed, he included a metaphor about a
watchmaker God and a remarkably accurate summary of
Lavoisier's chemical theory in his spiritualist Philosophie
de Vunivers; but on the very page of his explanation of
oxygen, Dupont suggested that the world was a huge
animal and men but insects upon it. He continued, in
the style of a Turgot, to develop the ideas of a Restif or
a Carra: a chain of invisible spirits stretches between
us and God; the spirits communicate with our sixth sense
by means of an invisible fluid; our souls migrate through
the mineral, vegetable, and animal worlds (judging from
his physiognomy, Dupont thought he might have been
a dog in his last incarnation), and travel among the stars
until at last they find peace as "Optimates" at the highest
stage of being. Dupont did not admit to mesmerist be-
liefs, but he had much in common with the mesmerists.
He identified health with virtue and said that sickness
ended by a "crisis' 7 ; and if he used the latest scientific
term, caloric, to describe his interplanetary fluid, he made
it resemble the vitalistic principle of fire that Carra and
other mesmerists adopted from the theories of the grand-
father of phlogistonists, G. E. Stahl. Dupont propounded
a scientific theory of the interaction of physical and moral
forces; he addressed his treatise to Lavoisier and wrote
it while hiding from the Terror in an observatory under
the protection of the astronomer J. ). Lalande.

The point is not that Dupont was a crypto-mesmerist,
but that he was hiding, that he expected to be ripped
from the observatory and guillotined at any moment,
and that he wrote the Philosophie de Vunivers as a final

FROM MESMER TO HUGO 137

credo, a testament for his friends and children. He
thought that it must incorporate the scientific advances
of the century and that it must not repudiate Voltaire's
victories over superstition; yet it must have room for
something more than the cold science and rationalism
of the Ancien Regime. It must account for the bloodshed
and the Terror that keep interrupting its narrative with
the suggestion that God must be either evil or impotent.
The Terror had penetrated the sanctuary of science in
which Dupont was hiding and had brought him face to
face with the greatest problem of the eighteenth-century
philosophers, the need of a theodicy. Condorcet, in exactly
the same position, answered this need by positing the
existence of "Progress/' a force that would triumph over
"superstition" in some future age. Dupont also invoked
two forces, "Oromasis," the good spirit, and "Arimane,"
the inferior spirit of death; but he acknowledged that he
was writing a poem, that the spirits and subspirits were
invisible genies that might, perhaps, snatch one from
under the guillotine's blade, and might not. The old belief
in the forward march of Reason could not sustain him;
he drew back into spiritualism, and so felt able to defy
Robespierre and Danton. "Such is, my friends, the doc-
trine that I wanted to expose to you before dying . . .
Such is my Religion . . . and I now shall permit the tyrants
to send my monad forth to prostrate itself before the
ETERNEL. Valete et me amate. 10 June 1793." 8

Dupont survived the Revolution, but his retreat into
spiritualism signaled the death of the Enlightenment.
After the Terror, mesmerists might be revolutionaries

8. P. S. Dupont de Nemours, Philosophic de Vunivers (Paris), quota-
tion from p. 236. "Monad" was Dupont's expression for the soul. It
suggested the Leibnizian concern for the inner, vitalistic principles of
matter as opposed to Newtonian mathematical analysis. On these two
basic trends in eighteenth-century science, see the first two chapters
of Ernest Cassirer's The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, tr. F. C. A.
Koelln and J. P. Pettegrove (Princeton, 1955).

138 FROM MESMER TO HUGO

like Bonneville or conservatives like the older Bergasse,
but they would not build their temples on the foundation
of Reason. The ideas of Fabre d'Olivet show the direction
that the conservative mesmerists took and also their pre-
dilection for temple-building. He attempted to construct
a new religion with the usual materials of spiritualism —
metempsychosis, primitive language, communications
with a hierarchy of spirits — and with mesmerism. His
numerous mesmerist cures persuaded him that the fluid
acted as the medium between man's will and nature,
which he conceived as the will of the "universal man"
composed of all individuals. "Mesmeric fluid is none
other than the universal man himself, affected and put
in movement by one of his emanations." It was by the
fluid's action on the will, not by reason, that Fabre cured
the sick, communicated with ghosts, and, in the highest
somnambulist state, acquired knowledge of God, science,
and political theory. The hierarchy of spirits provided
Fabre with a model for the organization of men on
earth: he would keep citizens stratified in classes by
reinforcing tradition and authority. Hostile to the revolu-
tionary ideal of equality, he favored monarchical gov-
ernment — or, better yet, a theocracy to be created by
Napoleon, perhaps with Fabre himself as pontiff. It was
an appropriate philosophy for the Empire, for Josephine
de Beauharnais consulted some of the mesmerist fortune-
tellers who survived the Revolution, and so did Napoleon,
if the memoirs of the Comte d'Allonville, a mesmerist
friend of Bergasse and d'Epremesnil, are to be believed.
"What is more bizarre still, General Bonaparte, when
about to leave for his first campaign in Italy, wanted to
have the fate that awaited him in the army predicted by the
somnambulist Mally-Chateaurenaud [possibly the same
Chateaurenaud who had been a member of the Society
of Harmony] . . . Bonaparte believed that the Battle of
Castiglione fulfilled the prediction of the somnambulist,

FROM MESMER TO HUGO 139

whom he again carefully had sought out before his
departure for Egypt." 9

Fabre's mystic, theocratic conservatism had much
in common with that of Joseph de Maistre, who spent
some of his long evenings in St. Petersburg assimilating
the ideas of Saint-Martin, Swedenborg, Willermoz, and
evidently several other mesmerists. De Maistre found
the theory of mesmerism already formulated in the
writings of Swedenborg; in fact he traced it all the way
back to Solon, but his researches apparently failed to
convert him to the mesmerist movement. Mesmerism
exerted more influence on another political system that
came out of Russia and that eventually was taken to be
conservative — the Holy Alliance. The Alliance's idealized
brotherhood of Christians under the sovereignty of God,
"la parole de vie" (the word of life), had been inspired
in part by the Baronne de Kriidener, a mystic of the mes-
merist-martinist-physiognomist variety who had won the
confidence of Tsar Alexander I by revealing the religious
character of his mission to destroy Napoleon, the Anti-
christ. When Mme. de Kriidener arrived in Paris with
the Russian troops in 1815, she gathered around her the
patriarchs of mesmerism, Bergasse and Puysegur, and its
matriarch, the Duchesse de Bourbon. Bergasse had been
reduced by then to an ill-furnished gardener's cottage

9. Memoires secrets de 1770 a 1820 par M. le Comte d'AUonville,
auteur des Memoires tires des papiers d'un homme d'etat (Paris, 1838-
1845), VI, 12-13. Fabre's statement is quoted in Leon Cellier, Fabre
d'Olivet: contribution a I'etude des aspects religieux du romantisme (Paris,
1953), p. 321, which mentions Josephine's mesmerist connections
(p. 181) and which is the source for the above account of Fabre's ideas.
Napoleon later considered Mesmer, Lavater, and Gall to be quacks,
according to the Journal of the Private Life and Conversations of the Emperor
Napoleon at Saint Helena by the Count de Las Cases (London, 1825), III,
66-68. Of course, no memoirs about Napoleon can be trusted. Even the
journal du magnetisme (Paris, 1847), pp. 239-253, a storehouse of Na-
poleonic legends, wisely refused to make him into a mesmerist.

140 FROM MESMER TO HUGO

in the outskirts of Paris, but the tsar did not hesitate to
visit him, accompanied by Mme de Kriidener, and to
consult him several times on the millenium of universal
harmony to be established in Europe. According to one
source, Bergasse wrote a draft of the Holy Alliance. He
certainly influenced it and tried to maintain his influence
in later years by corresponding with the tsar. 10

Mme. de Kriidener' s arrival in Paris coincided with
the revival of mesmerism and other spiritualist vogues,
a revival that continued intermittently through the July
Monarchy and the Second Empire. Her own seances
attracted the most fashionable Parisians of the first years
of the Restoration, but her following declined as the
apocalypse she predicted refused to arrive on schedule
and as her prophecies, after her separation from Alexander,
increasingly echoed the liberal views of her friend
Benjamin Constant. The beau monde found a more
attractive prophet in the beautiful Indian somnambulist
Alina d'Elder; it flocked to the mesmerist sessions of
Dr. Koreff, Mile. Lenormand, and the Abbe Faria (who
made water taste like champagne) and later patronized
the mystic, masonic mesmerism of Henri Delaage. The
working classes turned, in times of need, to the more
obscure mesmerist fortune-tellers that Balzac found
everywhere in the seedy sections of Paris during the
July Monarchy. By the time of mesmerism's apogee in
the 1850's, new techniques had evolved for summoning
ghosts and triggering convulsions. The mesmerized
wands and chains remained but the tubs were generally
abandoned; mirrors had been perfected so that they

10. On de Maistre and Mesmer, see Emile Dermenghem, Joseph de
Maistre mystique (Paris, 1946), p. 47; on Bergasse's relations with Alex-
ander and Mme. de Kriidener, see Louis Bergasse, Un defenseur des
principes traditionnels sous la Revolution, Nicolas Bergasse (Paris, 1910),
pp. 257-263. The literature on Mme. de Kriidener, which has tended to
minimize her influence on the Holy Alliance, is summarized in E. J.
Knapton, "An unpublished letter of Mme. de Kriidener," Journal of
Modern History, IX (1937), 483-492.

FROM MESMER TO HUGO

showed spirits instead of merely reinforcing the move-
ment of the fluid; spirits communicated their messages
by means of rapping tables and charcoal drawings; and
the old-fashioned mesmerist massagers had surrendered
the command of the movement to the somnambulists.
A modern mesmerist, like Alphonse Cahagnet, spent all
his time communicating with ghosts, who telegraphed
snatches of poetry, their regards to their families, and
descriptions of heaven to a medium or, very often, to
a table, which rapped out their messages in a sort of
morse code.

While these innovations developed, the apostolic
succession continued from Bergasse and Puysegur to
J. P. F. Deleuze and then to the Baron Du Potet. The
Society of Universal Harmony, which had collapsed with
most of its provincial affiliates in 1789, was restored in
1815 under Puysegur as the Society of Mesmerism (Societe
du Magnetisme) and was reorganized in 1842. By the
1850's, when Du Potet had taken command of the move-
ment, the faithful met twice a week in rooms over the
restaurant of the Freres Provencaux of the Palais Royal.
The sessions did not recreate the splendor of the old
meetings at the Hotel de Coigny, but they were well
attended and cheaper (admission, 15 sous); and the new
organization, in keeping with the more commercial
spirit of the time, kept regular office hours, saved its
funds diligently, and published a monthly Journal du
magnetisme (20 volumes, 1845-1861). Mesmerism's re-
vival aroused its natural enemies, the orthodox doctors
and scientists, who fought it once more with the tried
and true weapons of ridicule and academic commissions.
The Theatre des Varietes produced a successful satire on
mesmerism, La Magnetisomanie, in 1816, and in 1825
the Academy of Medicine began a series of investigations
and debates that set off a new wave of pamphleteering.
In 1831 the academicians appeared to end their fifty-
year war against the mesmerists by hearing a report

142 FROM MESMER TO HUGO

from an investigative commission that conceded some
therapeutic value to mesmerism. But the academy returned
to the attack in 1837; following a hostile report from yet
another commission, it cleverly offered a prize of 5,000
francs to any mesmerist who could read without using
his eyes. In 1840, after all competitors had failed, it
finally refused to deal with mesmerism any more, rele-
gating it to the limbo of useless issues like the squaring
of the circle. Mesmerism fared better elsewhere, however.
By midcentury the relatively modest varieties of fluidism
and somnambulism were being studied seriously through-
out Europe. Shortly before his death in 1815, Mesmer
himself had given his blessing to the establishment of a
mesmerist course in the University of Berlin. James
Braid had begun the investigation of induced hypnosis
in England, and French hypnotists, led by J. M. Charcot,
were to exert an important influence on the development
of Freudian psychology. 11

Mesmerism also continued to inspire political the-
orists — not merely the mystic conservatives who pursued
the lines of thought developed by Fabre d'Olivet, but also
liberals and Utopian socialists, who carried on the Restif-
Bonneville tradition. Pierre Ballanche, the leading post-
revolutionary mystic of Lyons, flirted with most illuminist
doctrines, including mesmerism, and aligned himself
with the conservative, theocratic ideas of Fabre and

11. One of the most interesting contemporary accounts of nine-
teenth-century mesmerism is Alexandre Erdan, la France mistique
[sic]: tableau des excentricites religieuses de ce terns [sic] (Paris, 1855), I,
40-177. The Journal du Magnetisme is an excellent but unwieldy source,
and Charles Burdin and E. F. Dubois, Histoire academique du magnetisme
animal . . . (Paris, 1841), contains a detailed but biased survey of the
battles between mesmerists and academicians. Balzac's report on mes-
merism is in chapter 13 of he Cousin Pons. The connections between
mesmerism, Christian Science, and Freudian psychology are traced in
Stefan Zweig, Mental Heaters: Franz Anton Mesmer, Mary Baker Eddy,
Sigmund Freud, tr. Eden and Cedar Paul (New York, 1932), and in Frank
Podmore, From Mesmer to Christian Science: A Short History of Mental
Healing (New York, 1963).

FROM MESMER TO HUGO

Joseph de Maistre; but he also gave a start to the most
important mystic opponent of capitalism, Charles Fourier.
It was in Ballanche's Bulletin de Lyon that Fourier an-
nounced his discovery of Universal Harmony, the guiding
principle of his philosophy. For Fourier, as for Bergasse,
Universal Harmony was to rule in the future Utopian
state that would follow the imminent apocalypse. "It is
necessary to throw all political, moral and economic the-
ories into the fire and to prepare for the most astonishing
event . . . FOR THE SUDDEN TRANSITION FROM
SOCIAL CHAOS TO UNIVERSAL HARMONY." Like
Bergasse, Fourier built his system on the analogy be-
tween physical and moral laws of nature. He, too, claimed
to be the Newton of politics: "I soon recognized that the
laws of passionate Gravity conformed in all respects to
those of material Gravity, which Newton and Leibniz
had explained, and that there was a COMMON SYSTEM
OF MOVEMENT FOR THE MATERIAL AND FOR THE
SPIRITUAL WORLD." In spite of its many similarities
with Fourier's Theorie des quatre mouvements, Bergasse's
Considerations sur le magnetisme animal would have been
one of the books on Fourier's bonfire; for Fourier imagined
burning all books but his own. He denied indebtedness
to any author. He alone had discovered the natural law
of society, the gravitational pull of passion, and this
must be put to work, instead of being repressed, in order
to organize men in a universal brotherhood. But Fourier's
claims to originality hid only the exact point at which
he came into his mesmerist inheritance; the mesmerist
influence is evident in many of his works, even in details
like his defense of water witching, his fluidic theory of
light and heat, and his stress on the three principles of
the mesmerist trinity — God, matter, and movement.
Fourier's preference for primitive, natural society as
opposed to "civilization" recalled Bergasse and Court
de Gebelin as well as Rousseau, and his pride in his
humble position as "sergeant of a shop" (sergent de

144 FROM MESMER TO HUGO

boutique) echoed the mesmerists' denunciations of
academicians. "But if the discovery is the work of an
unknown, a provincial type or a scientific pariah, of one
of those intruders who, like Prion, have the fault of not
even being academicians, he is bound to draw down upon
his head all the anathemas of the cabal." Fourier even
condemned the faculty of medicine for persecuting mes-
merism, which he finally incorporated into his own sys-
tem by explaining that the mesmerists had misused and
misunderstood their science. Contact with the other
world was really to be explained by the operation of the
somnambulist's "ultrahuman faculty"; somnambulism
proved the immortality of the soul; and if it had been
abused in "civilization," it would be "in great fashion,
of great utility, in the state of harmony." 12

While Fourier assimilated mesmerism as one of many
foreign elements (including the transmigration of souls
and the copulating planets) in a vision that was ultimately
his own, his followers hardly can be distinguished from
the radical mesmerists of the midcentury. Just Muiron
came to Fourierism by way of mesmerism, and Joseph
Olivier and Victor Hennequin fit Mesmer's cosmology
into the roomy "infiniverse" (infinivers) of Fourier.
Fourier himself had refused to be mesmerized on his
deathbed, but he communicated mesmerically with his
disciples after his death; and the spirits that talked at

12. Charles Fourier, Theorie des quqtre mouvements et des destinees
generates: prospectus et annonce de la decouverte, in Oeuvres completes
de Ch. Fourier (Paris, 1841-1848), I, xxxvi, 12, 102, 23; Fourier, Theorie
de I'unite universelle, in Oeuvres completes, III, 337; Fourier, Le Nouveau
monde industriel et societaire, in Oeuvres completes, VI, 454-457. Fourier
denied having any "notion pratique" of mesmerism. He said that he
had read a work by Deleuze, which was enough to convince him that
the mesmerists did not understand their fluid, and that seven-eighths
of mankind could not experience somnambulism (Fourier, "Des cinq
passions sensuelles," La Phalange: Revue de la science sociale [Paris, 1846],
IV, 123-129). I am indebted to Jonathan Beecher, who guided me through
the wonderland of Fourierism and is presently preparing a definitive
map of it.

FROM MESMER TO HUGO

a Fourierist "turning-table" session of 1853 showed
excellent command of mesmerism according to the
account published by Alexandre Erdan.

M. VINAQUIN— Certainly. Ask the table, that is, the
spirit that is inside it; it will tell you that I have above
my head an enormous pipe of fluid, which rises from my
hair up to the stars. It's an aromatic pipe by which the
voice of spirits on Saturn reaches my ear . . . THE TABLE
(thumping strongly with its foot) — Yes, yes, yes. Aromatic
pipe. Conduit. Aromatic pipe. Conduit. Conduit. Conduit.
Conduit. Yes.

This mesmero-fourierism made perfect sense to the mes-
merists, who welcomed the adherence of Fourier's fol-
lowers, published long extracts from Fourier's works,
and marveled that Fourier, with only a layman's knowl-
edge of mesmerism gained from a reading of Deleuze,
should have "divined by intuition most of mesmerism's
secrets." 13

The mesmerists also welcomed some Saint-Simonians
into the fold. Saint-Simon, like Fourier, claimed to be
the Newton of a new social science, and he drew parallels
between the physical laws of the universe and the moral
laws of society. He himself kept his fancy earthbound,
but his disciples soared into the upper regions of mysti-
cism, where they often crossed paths with the Fourierists.
Saint-Simon's closest early associate, the Comte J. S. E.
de Redern, posed as a mesmerist professor and wrote a
full-blown mesmerist treatise after splitting with him;
and a more faithful follower, Pierre Leroux, associated
the cause with a mixture of mesmerism, martinism, and

13. Alexandre Erdan, La France mistique [sic], I, 75-76. Charles
Pellarin, The Life of Charles Fourier, tr. F. G. Shaw, 2 ed. (New York, 1848),
p. 225, contains an account of Fourier's deathbed scene. The mesmerist
pronouncements on Fourierism are in journal du magnetisme, VI (1848),
337-350 and 368-375; quotation comes from p. 375.

FROM MESMER TO HUGO

carbonarism that would have delighted Bonneville.
Robert Owen completed the hierarchy of radical Utopian
mesmerists. A letter by Anna Blackwell announced to the
readers of the Journal du magnetisme in 1853 that ''Mr.
Owen, the famous socialist . . . who had been until now
a materialist in the strongest sense of the word, has
been completely converted to the belief in the immortal-
ity of the soul by the conversations he has had with mem-
bers of his family, who have been dead for years." In
another letter published by the journal, Owen revealed
that he also had communicated with Benjamin Franklin
and Thomas Jefferson, whose experience of the other
world had apparently weakened their antimesmerist
convictions, and the spirits had not restricted their
messages to religious matters; in seventeen or eighteen
seances they had stressed "that the object of the current
general manifestations is to reform the population of
our planet, to convince all of us of the truth of another
life and to make us all sincerely charitable."

This Utopian strain of mesmerism went back to Ber-
gasse's concept of "natural society," to Gebelin's prim-
itive world, and to Carra's third stage of history, modeled
on the ideal desert-island community. Even Brissot had
planned to establish Utopian colonies in France, Switzer-
land, and the United States. How appropriate, then, was
the discovery in 1846 that Mesmer himself had been a
Utopian radical! From 1846 to 1848, the Journal du mag-
netisme printed installments of a manuscript, Notions
elementaires sur la morale, Yeducation et la legislation pour
servir a V instruction publique en France, which it said
Mesmer had written during the Revolution and had sent
to the French National Convention. The Notions advanced
doctrines worthy of the severest Jacobin: sovereignty
belonged solely to the people; law was the expression of
the general will; taxation should be used to create the
greatest possible equality; and festivals of the Supreme
Being should promote "social virtues" among the citizens.

FROM MESMER TO HUGO 147

These virtues corresponded closely with those advocated
by the Society of Universal Harmony; they would reign
in the "harmonie universelle" of the ideal society modeled
by Mesmer from material that seemed to come straight
out of the theories of Bergasse. The only original element
in the Notions was an analysis of how civic spirit and per-
haps even the general will would operate during civic
festivals, which were to be elaborate affairs for promul-
gating laws, judging legal disputes, holding athletic
contests, and celebrating the civil religion. Mesmer
explained, "Finally, it will be proven by the principles
that form the system of influences or of animal magnetism
that it is very important for man's physical and moral
harmony to gather frequently in large assemblies . . .
where all intentions and wills should be directed toward
one and the same object, especially toward the order of
nature, while singing and praying together; and that it
is in these situations that the harmony that has begun to
be upset in some individuals can be reestablished and
health fortified." The twin principles of "liberie et sante"
(liberty and health) would animate the ideal republic
that Mesmer outlined to the Convention. Every citizen
would serve society progressively as "enfant," "eleve,"
"defenseur de la patrie," "pere de famille et citoyen,"
"fonctionnaire public," "surveillant," and "veteran"
(infant, pupil, defender of the fatherland, family father
and citizen, civil servant, overseer, veteran). Mesmer care-
fully described the social functions, the age limits, and
even the costumes that were to characterize each stage.
Careful planning and the proper theory of man and the
universe promised to make France into a democracy that
would last forever, forever dedicated to liberty and
equality. It was a noble plan, the journal commented,
noting that it came as close to Fourierism as Fourier had
come to mesmerism.

In fact, mesmerism had come full circle with the
emergence of the new, revolutionary Mesmer in 1846. It

148 FROM MESMER TO HUGO

had returned to the themes of the 1780's just in time for
another blast of revolutionary propaganda in another
revolutionary situation. The passions of Bergasse and
Brissot seemed to rage again in the diatribes published
in the Journal du magnetisme against the dual "despots"
of the academies and politics: "Our learned men wanted
nothing to do with mesmerism, just as other men wanted
nothing to do with liberty . . . [but] the links of the
despotic chain that science did not want to break have
burst into splinters." Still alive after sixty years of com-
bat, the radical strain of mesmerism, the spirit of 1789,
expressed itself for the last time in the mesmerist mani-
festo of 1848. "Rejoice mesmerists! Here is the dawning
of a great and beautiful new day . . . O Mesmer! You
who loved the republic . . . you foresaw this time, but . . .
you were not understood." 14

The spell that Mesmer had cast upon the French
in the 1780's brought men of letters as well as polit-
ical scientists under his influence during the first half

14. Redern's mesmerism is mentioned in Henri Gouhier, La
Jeunesse d' August e Comte et la formation du positivisme (Paris, 1936), II,
128-132. The letters from Anna Blackwell and Robert Owen, dated
April 2 and May 20, 1853, are in the journal du magnetisme, XII (1853),
199 and 297, and have been retranslated from the French. See also Frank
Podmore, Robert Owen: A Biography (London, 1906), II, 600-614. Mes-
mer's Notions appeared throughout vols. Ill— VII (1846-1848) of the
journal du magnetisme; the quotations are from III (1846), pp. 251, 94,
38-39, and 98, and V (1847), pp. 99 and 97. Mesmer showed no interest
in politics before the Revolution, and his Memoire de F.-A. Mesmer sur
ses decouvertes (Paris, 1799) is more remarkable for its dubious claim
that he discovered somnambulism than for any political views. The
story that he timed a trip to Paris in 1793 well enough to salute his
old enemy Bailly while Bailly was being carted to the guillotine has
no basis in fact. Mesmer did dress up some requests for patronage to
the Directory in republican language: see his letters reprinted in the
journal du magnetisme, I (1845), 48-51, V (1847), 265, and VIII (1849),
653-656. So it seems possible that he became a late convert to republican-
ism, and there is no reason to doubt the journal du magnetisme's claims
that it was publishing a genuine, unedited manuscript of Mesmer's.
In any case, Mesmer made his first public appearance as a revolutionary
in 1846-1848.

FROM MESMER TO HUGO 149

of the nineteenth century. Mesmer might be consid-
ered the first German romantic to cross the Rhine; he
certainly opened up the route for two of the most
important German agents among French romantics,
Madame de Stael and Dr. D.-F. Koreff. The Baron de
Stael, a Swedenborgian friend of Lavater and Saint-
Martin, mesmerized with the founders of animal mag-
netism. His influence on his wife may have been as
weak as their marriage, but other mesmerists — the
Duchesse de Bourbon and Mme. de Kriidener, to name
only the most famous— probably affected her formulation
of romanticism. Although Mme. de Stael, like Chateau-
briand and Benjamin Constant, managed to live with
mesmerists without being converted by them, her respect
for their ideas seems to have contributed to her favorable
treatment of German mysticism in De YAllemagne. Koreff,
a German mesmerist doctor, also helped Mme. de Stael
turn away from the Enlightenment philosophy of her
youth. During a visit to her retreat at Coppet, he evidently
mesmerized her ailing mystic mentor, A. G. de Schlegel,
charmed her, and won the reward of a eulogy in De
I'AUemagne. Koreff acted as a sort of mesmerist literary
agent. He knew the most important romantic writers of
France and Germany and mesmerized many of them.
His successful treatment of Prince Hardenberg brought
him a chair in physiology at the University of Berlin and
a position as councillor of state, organizer of the new
University of Bonn, and one of the most powerful men in
Prussian politics and academics. After losing his grip
on Hardenberg, Koreff retreated to Paris where his wit,
his penetrating glances, his impressive German accent,
and his leadership of the mesmerist movement made
him a lion of the salons of the Restoration and the July
Monarchy. Koreff helped produce and direct the great
French vogue of the tales of Hoffmann, his friend and
fellow mesmerist; he introduced Heine to the literary
circles of Paris; he purveyed the fantastic among Nodier,

FROM MESMER TO HUGO

Hugo, Balzac, Stendhal, Delacroix, and Chateaubriand;
he even acted — unsuccessfully — as doctor to Marie
Duplessis, the Dame aux Camelias. 15

Koreff's triumphal march through the Parisian salons
provides only a crude measure of mesmerism's influence;
for although he met everyone, he did not convert everyone
he met. He doctored his good friend Benjamin Constant
without winning him to the cause, and those he won did
not necessarily express their faith in their works. French
romantic writing is full of electric shocks, occult forces,
and ghosts, but it is not easy to determine how many
of them were animated by mesmerism. Is the following
excerpt from a "harmonic" by Lamartine, for example,
merely a metaphor?

L'harmonieux ether, dans ses vagues d'azur,
Enveloppe les monts d'un fluide plus pur.

That mesmerism helped lift the poet to his intuitive
sense of the infinite is suggested by the fact that the
mesmerists of the journal du magnetisme treated him as
one of their own. Many other writers received similar
treatment. Alexandre Dumas, for example, was great
material for mesmerist propaganda. He even wrote some
himself, based on his own somnambulist experiments,
and he included generous doses of mesmerizing in novels
like Joseph Balsamo, where Balsamo, a sort of mesmerist
Faust, projects fluid from mirrors, pianos, wands, and
his eyes, and exults, after a somnambulist session crucial
to the plot, "Thus is science no vain word like virtue!
Mesmer has defeated Brutus." Mesmerism provided
Dumas and many other romantic writers with the material

15. See Viatte, Les source occultes du romantisme, vol. II, chap. Ill,
and Marietta Martin, Un, aventurier intellectuel sous la Restauration et
la Monarchic de Juillet: le docteur Koreff (1783-1851) (Paris, 1925). The
Baron de StaeTs mesmerizing is mentioned in Testament politique de
M. Mesmer . . . (Paris, 1785), p. 20.

FROM MESMER TO HUGO

they wanted, with a system of what Theophile Gautier
called "the fantastic, the mysterious, the occult, the
inexplicable/' The mesmerists of the 1780's believed that
this system harmonized with the rationalism of the
Enlightenment. But it also expressed a form of pre-
romanticism. According to a pamphlet of 1784, a member
of the Society of Harmony proclaimed that the reign
of "Voltaire, of the Encyclopedists, is collapsing; that
one finally gets tired of everything, especially of cold
reasoning; that we must have livelier, more delicious
delights, some of the sublime, the incomprehensible,
the supernatural." 16

Because of its unfamiliar vocabulary, mesmerism
may elude the lay reader's investigation of French litera-
ture. He should be on his guard when he finds a writer
like Gautier putting characters "en rapport" by touching
one another or overcoming an "obstacle" in one another's
"atmosphere." When Gautier arbitrarily interjects a
harmonica into a story and permits a character to see the

16. Alphonse de Lamartine, "L'Infini dans les cieux," in Harmonies
poetiques et religieuses, Classiques Gamier ed. (Paris, 1925), p. 76 (the
lines can be translated as: 'The harmonious ether, in its azure waves,/En-
velops the mountains in a pure fluid"); article on Lamartine in Journal
du magnetisme, VI (1848), 217-224; Alexandre Dumas, Memoires d'un
medecin: Joseph Balsamo, Calmann Levy ed. (Paris, 1888), III, 113; Theo-
phile Gautier, Jettatura, in Romans et contes, Charpentier ed. (Paris,
1923), p. 188; L' Antimagnetisme . . . (London, 1784), pp. 140-141. Dumas
published an account of his mesmerizing in Celestin Gragnon, Du
traitement et de la guerison de quelques maladies chroniques au moyen du
somnambulisme magnetique . . . (Bordeaux, 1859), and he explained the
mesmerist inspiration of Joseph Balsafno in a letter published by the
Journal du magnetisme, V (1847), 146-154. The journal later objected to
the portrayal of Mesmer in the second part of the novel but applauded
the mesmerizing in Dumas' Urbain Grandier (ibid., VIII [1849], 152—
153, and IX [1850], 228 and 233). A complete mesmerist tour of French
and also English, American, and German literature might enlarge our
understanding of many writers (notably Poe, Hawthorne, Sand, Hoff-
mann, Kleist, and Novalis, and even philosophers such as Fichte,
Schelling, and Schopenhauer) and of popular tastes in reading, rep-
resented by now-forgotten best sellers like Frederic Soulie's Le Mag-
netiseur (Paris, 1834).

152 FROM MESMER TO HUGO

"rayons" (rays) of the soul — which is a "petite lueur
tremblotante" (tiny, trembling gleam) subject to the
"attraction" (gravity) of the will — through the heroine's
skin, he may be assumed to be talking mesmerism. The
assumption turns into a conviction as Gautier sets his
characters to mesmerizing one another by projecting
fluid from their eyes and applying a mesmeric wand and
even a tub to provoke somnambulism. He seems to treat
mesmerism as something more than a Hoffmannesque
phantom, an English dandy, or any other literary prop:
he describes Mesmer's fluid as if it were the medium of
passion, the very stuff of life. The life of Alicia in Jettatura
flows out of her body, under the magnetic impulse of
Paul's evil eye, just as life escapes from Octave in Avatar.
The "science materialiste" of "civilisation ignorante"
fails to detect their fatal ennui, for it cannot find their
souls; and Gautier, showing a scorn of orthodox medicine
worthy of Bergasse, calls in occult scientists to treat them.
Horned finger gestures and other devices act as lightning
rods against the "fluide malfaisant" (malevolent fluid)
of the evil eye, but they represent only the remnants
of primitive science contained in the superstitions of
the common people and so fail to rescue Alicia. Octave,
however, is saved by a doctor who has discovered the
primitive science itself, which turns out to be a Hindu
variety of mesmerism that would have delighted Court
de Gebelin and perhaps even the Encyclopedist who had
called for a "new Paracelsus" to create a science of the
soul. 17

In his essay on Balzac, Gautier revealed that his
fictional accounts of mesmerism and related forms of

17. Gautier, Avatar, in Romans et conies, pp. 52, 37-39; Jettatura,
pp. 211, 221, 129, 190. Mesmerism provided Gautier with a scientific
approach to other forms of the fantastic, notably opium visions (see
"La pipe d'opium," in Romans et contes). His mesmerist beliefs are
mentioned in the account of his occultism in H. van der Tuin, L'Evolu-
tion psychologique, esthetique et litteraire de Theophile Gautier: etude de
caracterologie "litteraire" (Paris and Amsterdam, 1933), pp. 203-220.

FROM MESMER TO HUGO

romantic science were meant to be taken seriously.
The essay showed that he and Balzac sealed their friend-
ship with a common faith in mesmerism. They even
planned a treasure hunt to be directed by a somnambulist
and experimented with somnambulism under the guid-
ance of Mme. Emile de Girardin, their companion in
matters of literature and occult science. Mesmerism in-
spired Gautier's description of Balzac as a "voyant"
with a heady sense of realism, a // somnambule ,, with
his feet on the ground, an "avatar" with an enormous,
phrenological memory bump and eyes that could read
through one's chest by mighty jets of mesmeric fluid.
And mesmerism determined the formula for success that
Balzac passed on to Gautier: "He [Balzac] wanted to be
a great man and he became one by incessant projections
of that fluid which is more powerful than electricity and
which he analyzed so subtly in Louis Lambert/' 18

Gautier was referring to the fragments of Lambert's
"Theorie de la Volonte" (Theory of the Will), which
explained, with appropriate reference to "Mesmer's
discovery, so important and still so badly appreciated,"
that man could make direct contact with the spiritual
world and could also control life on earth by exerting
his willpower, that is, by directing fluid from his inner
sense or "inner vision" through all obstacles, space,
and time. Balzac's Lambert had succeeded Newton. He
had discovered the secret realm where the material and
the spiritual met, and he passed from the former into the
latter, where he remained in a state of Hindu-like "ec-
stasy," very like the "extase" described in many issues
of the Journal du magnetisme and the catalepsy in the
Barberinist strain of mesmerism. All mesmerists empha-
sized the importance of the will. For example, Henri
Delaage, a typical mesmerist of Balzac's time, expounded

18. Theophile Gautier, "Honore de Balzac," in Portraits contempo-
rains: litterateurs— peintres—sculpteurs— artistes dramatiaues, Charpentier
ed. (Paris, 1874), pp. 48, 63, 58, 88, 71.

154 FROM MESMER TO HUGO

ideas that hardly can be distinguished from those of
Balzac and Lambert. 'There exists a very subtle magnetic
fluid, the link in man between soul and body; without a
particular seat, it circulates through all the nerves, which
it stretches and loosens at the command of the will; its
color is that of the electric spark . . . Glances from the
eye, those rays of the spirit of life, are the mysterious
chain that links souls sympathetically across space."
Delaage remarked, "The will, H. de Balzac told us one
day, is the moving force of the imponderable fluid, and
the [body's] members are the conducting agents of it/'
To make the point even clearer, Delaage's exposition of
classic mesmerism was published with a long excerpt
from Ursule Mirouet, where Balzac expatiated on "the
doctrine of Mesmer, who recognized in man a penetrating
influence . . . put to work by the will, curative by the
abundance of the fluid . . ." Balzac did not restrict mes-
merism to the theoretical sections of his novels. He
built it into his characters, whose passions vibrated along
waves of the "vital fluid" that was treated as the essence
of life in Le Centenaire ou les deux Beringheld. Raphael
recognized that this force was also the essence of love,
thanks to his own "Theorie de la Volonte" in La Peau de
chagrin; and in his foreword to La Comedie Humaine,
Balzac explained that it occupied a place of great impor-
tance in his panorama of life in the early nineteenth
century. "Animal magnetism, whose miracles I have
familiarized myself with since 1820; the fine research of
Gall, Lavater's successor, and, in short, all those who
have studied thought the way opticians have studied
light, two virtually similar things, confirm the ideas both
of the mystics, those disciples of Saint John the Apostle,
and of the great thinkers who have established the
spiritual world." 19

19. Honore de Balzac, Louis Lambert, Marcel Bouteron and Jean
Pommier ed. (Paris, 1954), p. 95; Instruction explicative et pratique des
tables tournantes . . . par Ferdinand Silas, precedee d'une introduction sur

FROM MESMER TO HUGO

This statement indicates that several other philos-
ophers besides Mesmer helped boost Balzac into the
supernatural. Balzac found Swedenborg especially helpful
and wrote Seraphita as a Swedenborgian formulation of
such spiritualist doctrines as metempsychosis, primitive
religion, the chain of spirits, and even the animated
planets. But Seraphita offers the version of Sweden-
borgianism that was common among mesmerists. Its
first chapter can be read as an account of somnambulism,
and its third chapter expresses Balzac's belief that Sweden-
borg beat Mesmer to the discovery of animal magnetism.
Similarly, Balzac's main mesmerist novel, Ursule Mirouet,
describes a mesmerist character as a "Swedenborgist."
The overlapping references are understandable, for
Swedenborg and Mesmer provided Balzac with the same
message: the attempt of scientists to weigh and measure
the exterior of things was blinding them to the greater
problem of understanding the inner being. Balzac also
might have extracted this message from the works of
Diderot and Leibniz or of other writers he admired. He

V action motrice du fluide magnetique par Henri Delaage, troisieme edition,
augmentee d'un chapitre sur le role du fluide magnetique dans le mecanisme
de la volonte par H. de Balzac (Paris, 1853), pp. 6-12; Balzac, "Avant-
Propos" to La Comedie Humaine, in Oeuvres completes, Marcel Bouteron
and Henri Longnon ed. (Paris, 1912), p. xxxv. Despite Balzac's avowals
of his mesmerist beliefs, little of the extensive literature on him has
dealt with them. Well-known works like Albert Prioult, Balzac avant la
Comedie Humaine (1818-1829) (Paris, 1936), and Andre Maurois, Pro-
methee ou la vie de Balzac (Paris, 1965), barely mention his mesmerism,
although it is treated more fully in Moi'se Le Yaouanc, Nosographie de
I'humanite Balzacienne (Paris, 1959), F. Bonnet-Roy, Balzac, les medecins,
la medecine et la science (Paris, 1944), and Henri Evans, Louis Lambert'
et la philosophic de Balzac (Paris, 1951). As might be expected, the mes-
merists themselves recognized the pervasive role of their doctrine in
Balzac's novels. The Journal du magnetisme celebrated Balzac as "of all
renowned authors . . . the one who has studied mesmerism the most"
(IV, 284). Treating his theory of the will as standard mesmerism, it
printed his account of the origins of Dr. Bouvard, the mesmerist char-
acter in Ursule Mirouet. It mourned Balzac's death as a great loss to the
movement, but it took heart at his posthumous appearances at somnam-
bulist seances (see II, 25-26; IV, 284-287; X, 59-60; XV, 74, 170).

FROM MESMER TO HUGO

may have read the physiological explanation of mesmeric
"extase," a state that fascinated him, in Cabanis' Rapports
du physique et du moral de Yhomme. He studied Lavater's
physiognomy and Dr. F. G. Gall's phrenology, which had
been associated with mesmerism in a book by J. G. E.
Oegger. The ideas of Swedenborg, Lavater, Gall, and
possibly Cabanis thus blended in Balzac's description
of the "imperceptible fluid, the basis of the phenomena of
the human will, from which the passions, habits and the
shape of the face and the skull result." But mesmerism
provided the basic ingredient of this blend, for mes-
merism had shaped the ideas of Lavater and Saint-Martin;
and the mesmerist movement had evolved along the same
lines as Balzac's own ideas — from extreme rationalism
and even materialism to spiritualism. Thus it was essen-
tially mesmerism that enabled Balzac's characters to see
into one another's minds, to look through impenetrable
objects, to explain water witching, to travel miraculously
through space and time, and to consult ghosts. It inter-
vened to save Pons' life and to form Mme. Cibot's plot
in Le Cousin Pons; it separated and then reunited Mari-
anine and Beringheld in Le Centenaire; it smote Raphael
with an "electric blow" of "scientific love" in La Peau de
chagrin; it carried love between Stenie and Del Ryes
in Stenie; and it lifted Lambert into a state of spiritual
"harmony" in Louis Lambert. 20

20. Balzac, Ursule Mirouet, Calmann Levy ed. (Paris), pp. 82, 77;
P.-J.-G. Cabanis, Rapports du Physique et du Moral de Yhomme ... 8 ed.
(Paris, 1844), pp. 134-135 (the tenth member of the Society of Harmony
was a "Cabanis" from Brive-la-Gaillarde; this was probably the philos-
opher, then a medical student, or his father, who died in Brive in 1786);
Balzac, La Peau de chagrin (Paris, 1900), p. 151; Balzac, Louis Lambert,
p. 211. On Balzac's introduction to occult science, see Bernard Guyon,
La Pensee politique et sociale de Balzac (Paris, 1947), pp. 40-41 and 136-
145. Swedenborgianism often was amalgamated with other doctrines
in mesmerist theory, as one can see simply from the title of L.-A. Cahag-
net's Magnetisme: Encyclopedic magnetique spiritualiste, traitant speciale-
ment de faits psychologiques, magie magnetique, swedenborgianisme,
necromancie, magic celeste, etc. (Argenteuil, 1855).

FROM MESMER TO HUGO 157

Balzac could not have had a more appropriate or a
more mesmerist escort for his final journey into the super-
natural than Victor Hugo, who acted as pallbearer and
eulogizer at his funeral. Mesmerism had prepared Balzac
for the journey, for it had reinforced his religious faith
and had brought him out of the eighteenth century by a
route like that traveled by Dr. Minoret in Ursule Mirouet
and indeed by most early nineteenth-century mesmerists.
A somnambulist session upset the "Voltairian old age"
(vieillesse voltairienne) of Dr. Minoret, an old-fashioned
philosophe who had persecuted mesmerists before the
Revolution, and prepared him for an "electric" shaft
of grace. Through mesmerism, "the favorite science of
Jesus," and also the philosophy of ancient Egypt, India,
and Greece, Minoret learned "that a spiritual universe
exists." The doctor turned Christian, abandoned his faith
in Locke and Condillac, and took up the works of Sweden-
borg and Saint-Martin. Balzac might have added Hugo's
works to the list, for they marked the high point of mes-
merism's influence on spiritualist literature. A strong
current of mesmerism flowed through Hugo's poems in
company with the transmigrating souls, the hierarchy
of invisible spirits, the primitive religions, and the other
elements of spiritualism. Mesmerism occupied as proud
a place in Hugo's "Preface philosophique" to Les Mis-
erables as it had occupied in Balzac's Foreword to La
Comedie Humaine. It demonstrated, according to Hugo,
that "science, under the pretext of miraculousness, has
abandoned its scientific duty, which is to get at the root
of all things." Mesmerism led Hugo beyond science to a
vision of "l'harmonie universelle," where sun, moon,
and stars spun silently in an ocean of fluid. Hugo called
it the "vital fluid," the essence of life and of the after-
life; for mesmerism brought him into the supernatural,
the world that he longed to enter, not in order to satisfy
metaphysical curiosity, but to regain contact with
Leopoldine, his beloved, dead daughter. Paralyzed with

FROM MESMER TO HUGO

grief, in exile on the Channel Islands, he seized des-
perately at the chance of communicating with Leopoldine,
which was offered to him by Mme. de Girardin, the
somnambulist colleague of Balzac and Gautier. The
records of their seances show the broken poet exchanging
verse with Shakespeare and Dante, receiving revolu-
tionary advice from Jesus, and, in a pitiful moment,
asking his dead daughter, "Do you see the suffering of
those who love you?" (Vois-tu la souffrance de ceux
qui t'aiment?) and being assured by her that it would
soon end. The rational, scientific ideas of the eighteenth
century could not contain the suffering of Hugo; he, like
Dupont, fought off despair by retreating into poetry and
spiritualism. Samuel Johnson had been able to save him-
self from despair in the mid-eighteenth century by
invoking "celestial Wisdom"; Hugo also turned to religion
in the mid-nineteenth century, but not to the orthodox
Christianity that had died with the Enlightenment: he
searched the skies with the help of science or, rather,
"high science" (haute science):

Pendant que I' astronome, inonde de rayons,
Pese un globe a travers des millions de lieues,
Moi, je cherche autre chose en ce ciel vaste et pur.
Mais que ce saphir sombre est un abime obscurl
On ne peut distinguer, la nuit, les robes bleues
Des anges frissonnants qui glissent dans I'azur* 1

21. Balzac, Ursulc Mirouct, pp. 97-100, 75; Victor Hugo, "Preface
Philosophique," in Ocuvrcs romanesques completes, ed. Francis Bouvet
(Paris, 1962), pp. 889, 879; Chez Victor Hugo: Les tables tournantes de
Jersey: proces-verbaux des seances presentes et commentes par Gustave
Simon (Paris, 1923), p. 34; Hugo, "Pendant que le marin, qui calcule
et qui doute" in book 4 of Les Contemplations, Joseph Vianey ed. (Paris,
1922), pp. 377-378. The lines can be translated literally, "While the
astronomer, inundated with rays,/Weighs a globe across millions of
leagues,/I myself search for something else in that vast and pure sky. /But
what an obscure abyss is that dark sapphire!/One can not distinguish
at night the blue gowns/Of the fluttering angels who slip through the

FROM MESMER TO HUGO 159

Animal magnetism had gone through several reincarna-
tions since Mesmer announced its existence to Paris in
1778; by the time it had infiltrated La Comedie Humaine
and Les Miserables, it had left the Enlightenment behind,
in ruins.

azure." Hugo expressed his mesmerist convictions more explicitly but
less beautifully in many other poems of Les Contemplations. For a general
study of his mysticism, see Auguste Viatte, Victor Hugo ct les illumines
de son temps (Montreal, 1942).

6. CONCLUSION

CONCLUSION 161

The mesmerism that lifted Victor Hugo's poetry into
the supernatural would not have been recognized by the
men who sat around the first mesmeric tubs and quoted
the philosophes while congratulating one another on the
victory that they had won for Reason. The first mesmerists
had been mistaken in their glimpses of the future but not
entirely wrong in the belief that their science would
remake the world; for the mesmerism of the 1780's sup-
plied much of the material with which Frenchmen re-
built their views of the world after the Revolution, and
these views, with all their ghosts and copulating planets,
were as important to many of them as the first railroads.
Thus, the mesmerist movement provides a guideline to
the subtle transformation of popular attitudes during
the periods generally labeled the Age of Reason and the
Age of Romanticism; in fact, it has outlived those periods
and survives to this day on the grands boulevards of Paris,
where the occasional mesmerist still manipulates his
fluid for a price. The modern mesmerists are a sadly
declined and depopulated race, however, and Parisians
now hurry past them without a curious glance.

Curiosity and the stronger passion for "the marvel-
ous" consumed the Parisians of the 1780's and spirited
a number of fads that provide valuable information about
the attitudes of the reading public at that time. Worthy
of study in themselves, these attitudes are especially
important for understanding how radical ideas circulated
in prerevolutionary France. From the elite who applauded
Lavoisier's experiments in the Academy of Sciences to
the Sunday strollers who paid 12 livres for a half-hour
balloon ride above the Moulin de Javelle in Paris, French-
men burned with enthusiasm for the greatest fashion of
the decade before 1787 — science. Reports of scientific
marvels filled the popular literature of the 1780's; they
even filled the thoughts of Marat and Robespierre. How
natural, then, for radicals to use the scientific vogue as
a vehicle for the communication of their ideas. Even

162 CONCLUSION

balloons could be made to carry radical messages. An
unknown young commoner named Fontaine jumped into
a Montgolfiere just as it was taking off at Lyons on
January 19, 1784, and reportedly said to the prince, the
count, the knight of Saint Louis, and the other distin-
guished passengers who had refused him a place, "On
earth I respected you, but here we are equals/ 7 Here
was a deed to electrify the youth of France! Here was a
statement of equality, published in a well-known news-
paper, to ring in ears that had never heard of Rousseau's
Social Contract. 1

Mesmerism even surpassed balloon flights in arous-
ing enthusiasm during the 1780's. By exploiting this
enthusiasm, mesmerist propaganda, produced by radicals
as extreme as Jacques-Pierre Brissot, played an important
part in the obscure process by which radical ideas filtered
down from treatises on political theory to the vulgar read-
ing public. This public thrilled to the mysteries, scandals,
and passionate polemics of mesmerism and generally
ignored the Social Contract. Rousseau's abstruse treatise,
unlike his other works, had no relevance to the apolitical
interests of ordinary readers, while mesmerism had all
the necessary ingredients of a pre-1789 cause celebre.
Although only a small minority of mesmerist pamphlets
contained a political message, and these pamphlets failed
to provoke much of an outcry among the regime's sup-
porters, the mesmerist attacks on the abuses of French
society did not lack force: they hit home, because they
struck from within the popular and apolitical vogue of
science. They hit hard enough to alarm the police, and
the police failed to return the blows only because the
Parlement of Paris rallied to the mesmerists' support.
The Parlement's stand put it in contact with radical
mesmerist pamphleteers, who later popularized its

1. Journal de Bruxelles, January 31, 1784, p. 228. On the commercial
balloon flights, see Courier de ('Europe, November 16, 1784, p. 315.

CONCLUSION 163

attacks on the government during the prerevolutionary
crisis of 1787-1788. The mesmerists' skirmish with the
government in 1784 prepared for those attacks by uniting
the antigovernment forces in the group that met at
Kornmann's house after being expelled by the more
genteel members of the Society of Universal Harmony.
The Kornmann group represents the culmination of mes-
merism's movement into politics, for the group's mem-
bers campaigned vigorously against the Calonne and
Brienne ministries. The resistance to the government
was led in the Parlement by d'Epremesnil and Duport,
in the Notables by Lafayette, at the Bourse by Claviere,
and among the reading public by Brissot, Carra, Gorsas,
and Bergasse. It would take another book to analyze that
campaign, however, as the issues of 1787-1788 were
badly muddled: opposition to the government and sup-
port of the parlements could be interpreted as a sign of
reactionary as well as of radical convictions.

Despite its vagueness, "radical" seems the best term
to apply to the men who wanted to produce a fundamental
change in French politics and society; it fits the mes-
merists who expected their science to remake France and
whose writings had the flavor of revolutionary propa-
ganda. It does not fit the majority of mesmerists, the
abbots and countesses and wealthy merchants whose
attachment to Mesmer's tubs indicated only a dread of
disease, of boredom, or of missing out on the most
fashionable parlor game of the decade. The fashionable
character of mesmerism helps explain the tone of life,
the moeurs, as the French of the eighteenth century
would put it, among the upper classes during the 1780's.
Its radical character does not prove that the Ancien
Regime was mined by a secret network of revolutionary
cells like those imagined by the Abbe Barruel; it serves
rather as an indication of how much that regime's founda-
tion had been eroded by lack of faith among the literate
elite. Lafayette, Brissot, Bergasse, and Carra might have

164 CONCLUSION

found some other occasion for coordinating their attacks
against the system. They certainly did not need mesmerist
theory to be convinced of its evils. But when they were
capable of reading a revolutionary message into Mesmer's
Germanic gibberish, when they chose his tubs as a forum
for demanding the transformation of French society,
they bore witness to the depth of their discontent with
the social order. It was this discontent, rather than any
reform program, that set their ideas afire and provoked
them to inflame the public.

Mesmerism appealed to radicals in two ways: it
served as a weapon against the academic establishment
that impeded, or seemed to impede, their own advance-
ment, and it provided them with a "scientific" political
theory. Not only did it offer a young revolutionary like
Brissot an opportunity to associate himself with the
latest scientific fashion, the most controversial issue of
the decade, but it also aroused his innermost feelings,
his ambition to climb to the pinnacle of French science
and letters, and his hatred of the men at the top. Pin-
nacles are narrow by definition, but Brissot, Carra, and
Marat interpreted the narrowness of the academic estab-
lishment in political terms. They regarded academicians
as "despots" and "aristocrats" of philosophy, who op-
pressed those of inferior status and superior genius.
Their hatred of oppression carried them from philosophy
to politics with the outbreak of the Revolution, and it is
the sole spark of life remaining in their dead discourses
on the nature of fire or the best way to guide balloons.
Marat, the prerevolutionary expert on those two topics,
anticipated Marat the revolutionary in his demand for
something like popular sovereignty in scientific matters.
"If I must be judged, then let it be by an enlightened
and impartial public: it is to its tribunal that I confidently
appeal, to that supreme tribunal whose decrees the scien-
tific bodies themselves, are forced to respect." Mesmer
met the attacks of academicians with the same defense:
"It is to the public that I appeal." The names of Marat

CONCLUSION 165

and Mesmer sound odd together, but they represent an
important aspect of the radical movement of the 1780's.
Mesmer' s appeal, especially, reverberated up and down
the grub streets of Paris, where countless unappreciated
successors to Newton and Voltaire cursed the establish-
ment from the squalor described by Mallet du Pan:
"Paris is full of young men who take a little facility to
be talent, of clerks, shop assistants, lawyers, soldiers,
who make themselves into authors, die of hunger, even
beg, and produce pamphlets. " The frustrated ambitions
of these men provided the thrust behind many revolu-
tionary careers: a study of them might go far toward
explaining the genesis of the revolutionary elite. 2

It is the genesis of a revolutionary mood, the mood
that took hold of many Frenchmen in the generation after
the death of the great philosophes, that mesmerism helps
explain. The literate French of the late 1780's tended to
reject the cold rationalism of the midcentury in favor of
a more exotic intellectual diet. They yearned for the supra-
rational and the scientifically mysterious. They buried
Voltaire and flocked to Mesmer. The most outspoken of
them lacked the proper accent, the bon ton of the En-
lightenment Fathers, for they refused to whittle away
at abuses with witticisms. They would obliterate the social
evils that limited access to positions of power and pres-
tige, and so they embraced mesmerism, a cause that gave
vent to their fascination with the supernatural, their
crusading instincts, and their resentment of privilege.
To those who had lost faith in the old system, mesmerism
offered a new faith, a faith that marked the end of the
Enlightenment, the advent of the Revolution, and the
dawning of the nineteenth century.

2. J. -P. Marat, Decouvertes de M. Marat sur la lumiere ... 2 ed.
(London, 1780), p. 6; F. A. Mesmer, Precis historique des faits relatifs an
magnetisme animal . . . (London, 1781), p. 40; Memoires et correspondance
de Mailet du Pan, pour servir a I'histoire de la Revolution francaise, recueillis
et mis en ordre par A. Sayous (Paris, 1851), I, 130.

166 CONCLUSION

Mesmerism also appealed to some of the privileged,
to men like Lafayette, Duport, and d'Espremesnil, who
flirted with ideas that undercut their exalted social
position. These men championed mesmerism as a med-
icine of the common people, a science that would restore
the healthy primitives of Rousseau and Court de Gebelin.
Health would produce virtue, the virtue described by
Rousseau and Montesquieu, and virtue would create
harmony within the body politic as well as within individ-
uals. Mesmerism would regenerate France by destroying
"obstacles" to "universal harmony"; it would remedy
the pernicious effects of the arts (another idea adapted
from Rousseau) by restoring a "natural" society in which
physico-moral laws of nature would drown aristocratic
privileges and despotic government in a sea of mesmeric
fluid. First to go, of course, would be the doctors. The
program of the mesmerist revolution then became vague,
but its central proposition remained clear: the elimina-
tion of doctors would set natural laws at work to root out
all social abuses, for the despotism of doctors and their
academic allies represented the last attempt of the old
order to preserve itself against the forces of the true
science of nature and society.

The radical mesmerists expressed their contempo-
raries 7 feeling that the Ancien Regime had decayed be-
yond the point of natural recovery. Major surgery was
needed, and the court doctors could not be trusted to
perform it. The mesmerists undertook the task, armed
with their own medicine, and managed to inflict some
deep wounds; but after the death of the old order, they
saw that they had been united by a common desire for
change, not by clearly defined objectives, and they turned
on one another. D'Epremesnil's parliamentary bias
showed itself to be a reactionary program for the rule
of the nobility of the robe; Bergasse withdrew in dis-
illusionment from the National Assembly after the
October days; Lafayette and Duport ruled France for a

CONCLUSION

while as conservative constitutional monarchists only
to be overcome by Brissot and Carra, who rose (or fell)
into power with the Girondists; and Marat helped his
former friends to the guillotine before his own murder,
which meant the end of his wonderful fluids and the
visions they all had shared.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
APPENDICES
INDEX

171

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Because the mesmerists considered their movement
to be of enormous historical importance, they recorded
it in great detail. Thousands of mesmeric cures, visions,
and philosophical speculations fill the fourteen quarto
volumes of about 1000 pages each in the mesmerist
collection of the Bibliotheque Nationale, 4° Tb 62.1. The
collection was assembled during the eighteenth century
(it was probably completed in 1787) and contains many
helpful manuscript notes, including an "Avertissement"
explaining its purpose: to document "les ecarts de la
raison humaine." Despite its claim to be a "Recueil
general et complet de tous les ecrits publies pour et
contre le magnetisme animal," it lacks many important
mesmerist works and was supplemented in the prepara-
tion of this study by consulting the rich eighteenth-
century pamphlet collections of the British Museum.
There is a useful but incomplete bibliography of mes-
merism by Alexis Dureau, Notes bibliographiques pour
servir a Ihistoire du magnetisme animal . . . (Paris, 1869).

The manuscript sources consulted for this work
were:

Paris: Archives Nationales, T 1620 (inventory of
Duport papers), and W 479 and F 7 4595 (Bergasse and the
Revolution).

Bibliotheque Nationale, fonds fran(;ais, 6684 and
6687 (Hardy's journal), 1690 ("Recueil sur les medecins
et les chirurgiens" in the Joly de Fleury collection, con-
taining letters from Mesmer and his followers), and
Cabinet des Estampes (topical cartoons, especially from
the Hennin and Vinck collections).

Bibliotheque de lTnstitut de France, ms 883 (Con-
dorcet papers).

172 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Bibliotheque historique de la ville de Paris, ms
serie 84 and Collection Charavay, mss 811 and 813 (papers
of the Parisian Societe de l'Harmonie, incomplete).

Villiers, Loir-et-Cher: Chateau de Villiers (Ber-
gasse papers).

Avignon: Bibliotheque municipale, mss 3059 and
3060 (Corberon papers).

Orleans: Bibliotheque municipale, mss 1421 and
1423 (Lenoir papers).

La Rochelle: Bibliotheque municipale, ms 358
(biographical sketch of Petiot and the letter printed in
Appendix 2).

Grenoble: Bibliotheque municipale, mss R 1044 and
N 1761 (Servan papers).

Strasbourg: Archives de la ville, mss AA 2660 and
2662 (papers of the Preteur royal).

Zurich: Zentralbibliothek, ms 149 (Lavater papers).

The principal pamphlets and other printed sources
upon which this study is based have been cited in the
footnotes, but a word about other works on mesmerism
is in order here. Most were written by mesmerists. Any
good library contains shelves of volumes, mostly pub-
lished in the nineteenth century, purporting to reveal
or refute occult systems of medicine or of communicating
with spirits. They make interesting reading for a while,
but their taste soon palls. The reader investigating the
mesmerism of the 1780's would do well to skip these
works and to go directly to the writings of Bergasse,
Mesmer, and the other prominent mesmerists of that
time. But he should not fail to consult the Journal du mag-
netisme animal . . . (Paris, 1852), which contains the only
complete list of the 430 members of the Parisian Societe
de l'Harmonie. The list was compiled from the society's
records and tallies with the incomplete collection of them

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

in the Bibliotheque historique de la ville de Paris. The
reader also might profit from the work by J. P. F. Deleuze,
the last of the old school of mesmerists, Histoire critique
du magnetisme animal (Paris, 1813); and if he is interested
in an account of the movement by a modern mesmerist,
he should consult Emil Schneider, Der Animale Mag-
netismus, seine Geschichte und seine Beziehungen zur
Heilkunst (Zurich, 1950).

Works by nonmesmerists usually honor Mesmer as
a misunderstood and sometimes heroic prophet of
modern psychology. It may be that psychoanalysis devel-
oped from a line of occult scientists, linking Freud,
Charcot, and Braid with Bertrand, Puysegur, and Mesmer,
just as chemistry emerged from alchemy; but Mesmer's
reputation does not benefit from an examination of his
financial dealings, nor from the disclosure that his doc-
toral thesis (written, to be sure, before his discovery of
animal magnetism) was highly unoriginal, if not actually
plagiarized (Frank Pattie, "Mesmer's Medical Disserta-
tion and its Debt to Mead's De Imperio Solis ac Lunae,"
Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences,
XI [1956], 275-287). There was probably as much of
Cagliostro as of Freud in Mesmer's constitution, but the
possibility that he was a charlatan need not worry
the historian concerned with the movement rather than the
man. The movement, however, has usually been treated
as an episode in the history of medicine; thus: Rudolf
Tischner, Franz Anton Mesmer, Leben, Werk und Wirkungen
(Munich, 1928); Bernhard Milt, Franz Anton Mesmer und
Seine Beziehungen zur Schweiz: Magie und Heilkunde zu
Lavaters Zeit (Zurich, 1953); Margaret Goldsmith, Franz
Anton Mesmer: The History of an Idea (London, 1934);
D. M. Walmsley, Anton Mesmer (London, 1967); Ernest
Bersot, Mesmer et le magnetisme animal, les tables tournantes
et les esprits, 4 ed. (Paris, 1879); Jean Vinchon, Mesmer et
son secret (Paris, 1936); and E. V. M. Louis, Les Origines
de la doctrine du magnetisme animal: Mesmer et la Societe

174 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

de I'Harmonie, these pour le doctorat en medecine (Paris,
1898); actually, this last book contains very little informa-
tion about the society. More useful are Louis Figuier,
Histoire du merveilleux dans les temps modernes, 2 ed.
(Paris, I860), vol. Ill, and R. Lenoir, "Le mesmerisme et
le systeme du monde," Revue d'histoire de la philosophie, I
(1927), 192-219 and 294-321.

More useful still are works in the fertile field of
eighteenth-century science, particularly the following:
C. C. Gillispie, The Edge of Objectivity: An Essay in the
History of Scientific Ideas (Princeton, 1960); Jacques Roger,
Les Sciences de la vie dans la pensee francaise du XVlIle
siecle (Paris, 1963); I. B. Cohen, Franklin and Newton
(Philadelphia, 1956); Daniel Mornet, Les Sciences de la
nature en France au XVUIe siecle (Paris, 1911); Philip
Ritterbush, Overtures to Biology: The Speculations of
Eighteenth-Century Naturalists (New Haven and London,
1964); Everett Mendelsohn, Heat and Life: The Develop-
ment of the Theory of Animal Heat (Cambridge, Mass.,
1964); Erik Nordenskiold, The History of Biology: A Survey,
tr. L. B. Eyre (New York, 1946); F. J. Cole, Early Theories
of Sexual Generation (Oxford, 1930); Alexandre Koyre,
From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe (Baltimore,
1957); Alexandre Koyre, Newtonian Studies (Cambridge,
Mass., 1965); Abraham Wolf, A History of Science, Technol-
ogy and Philosophy in the Eighteenth Century (London,
1952); J. H. White, The History of the Phlogiston Theory
(London, 1932); Maurice Daumas, Lavoisier, theoricien
et experiment ateur . . . (Paris, 1955); Helene Metzger,
Les Doctrines chimiques en France du debut du XVlle a la
fin du XVUIe siecle (Paris, 1925); Douglas Guthrie, A History
of Medicine (London, 1945); Buffon, essays published by
the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle (Paris, 1952);
and P. F. Mottelay, Biographical History of Electricity and
Magnetism (London, 1922). And most useful of all is
browsing in the articles of the great Encyclopedic and,
especially, eighteenth-century periodicals, both those

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

on scientific subjects, like the Journal de Physique and
the Journal des Scavans, and those on general topics, like
the Journal de Paris, Mercure, Almanack des Muses, Annee
litteraire, Courier de VEurope, and Journal de Bruxelles.
These offer information on the state of ideas on a vulgar
level, the level that rarely finds treatment in conventional
intellectual histories.

177

APPENDIX 1. MESMER'S PROPOSITIONS

Mesmer reduced his theory of animal magnetism to twenty-
seven propositions, which he published at the end of his
Memoire sur la decouverte du magnetisme animal (Geneva, 1779).
The most important are the following:

1. II existe une influence mutuelle entre les corps celestes,
la terre et les corps animes.

2. Un fluide universellement repandu, et continue de
maniere a ne souffrir aucun vide, dont la subtilite ne permet
aucune comparaison, et qui, de sa nature, est susceptible de
recevoir, propager et communiquer toutes les impressions du
mouvement, est le moyen de cette influence.

8. Le corps animal eprouve les effets alternatifs de cet
agent; et c'est en s'insinuant dans la substance des nerfs,
qu'il les affecte immediatement.

9. II se manifeste particulierement dans le corps humain
des proprietes analogues a celles de l'aimant; on y distingue des
poles egalement divers et opposes, qui peuvent etre communi-
ques, changes, detruits et renforces; le phenomene meme de
l'inclinaison y est observe.

10. La propriete du corps animal, qui le rend susceptible
de l'influence des corps celestes, et de Taction reciproque de
ceux qui l'environnent, manifestee par son analogie avec
Taimant, m'a determine a la nommer magnetisme animal.

21. Ce systeme fournira de nouveaux eclaircissements sur
la nature du feu et de la lumiere, ainsi que dans la theorie de
l'attraction, du flux et reflux, de l'aimant et de l'electricite.

23. On reconnaitra par les faits, d'apres les regies pratiques
que j'etablirai, que ce principe peut guerir immediatement les
maladies des nerfs, et mediatement les autres.

178

APPENDIX 2. THE MILIEU OF AMATEUR
SCIENTISTS IN PARIS

This description of the Parisian lycees and musees, which
includes a reference to Jean-Louis Carra, comes from a letter
written during a trip to Paris by La Villemarais, of the Academy
of La Rochelle, to his colleague Seignette. It was copied from
the manuscript in the Bibliotheque de la ville de La Rochelle
and sent to the present writer by La Rochelle's most obliging
librarian, Mile. O. B. de Saint- Affrique.

PARIS, le 12 fevrier 1783
. . . Les beaux esprits et les savants sont presqu'invisibles ici;
quelques uns meme ne recoivent de visites qu'un jour de la
semaine, comme les Ministres, et si on veut les voir il faut
aller a leur audience publique. J'ai deja entendu une partie
des professeurs de physique et d'histoire naturelle — ceux
qui ont le plus de merite ont souvent des moyens si ingrats
qu'on ne peut tirer aucun profit de leurs lecons, cependant les
hommes, les femmes, de tout age, s'y portent en foule. J'allai,
il y a huit jours, au fameux Musee, rue Sainte-Avoye, ou M.
Pilatre de Rozier devait donner une recapitulation de tout ce
qu'il avait enseigne depuis trois mois. Je fus introduit dans un
assez beau cabinet, orne de fort beaux instruments de physique
experimentale — le milieu etait occupe par une superbe machine
electrique a deux plateaux, autour de laquelle un double rang
de femmes, tres parees, formait une enceinte qui occupait les
trois quarts du cabinet; par derriere, dans les coins et jusque
dans l'antichambre les hommes etaient entasses pele-mele;
on entendait a peine le jeune professeur, qui doctement expli-
quait les premiers phenomenes de l'electricite, et tres souvent
appellait la machine a son secours; deux ou trois coups de
ballon tires a l'improvise, des jets de lumiere extraordinaires,
et l'inflammation de la poudre a canon, jeterent parfois la belle
portion de l'assemblee dans un grand desordre, des voix char-
mantes pousserent des cris aigus, mais tout fut rajuste par la
presence d'esprit de M. de Rozier, qui nous assura qu'il n'y
avait rien a craindre. Je vous envoie ci-joint le prospectus de ce
Musee pour que vous en preniez une idee: vous verrez qu'il
ne ressemble en rien a celui de M. Court de Gebelin, qui n'est
qu'une societe litteraire, une ombre imparfaite des academies,
ou chaque membre lit ce qu'il a ecrit sur tel sujet que bon lui

AMATEUR SCIENTISTS IN PARIS

semble. J'y fus encore jeudi dernier. M. Caillava, President,
lut la preface d'un ouvrage sur Tart dramatique. M. de St. Ange
donna un morceau de sa traduction des Metamorphoses
d'Ovide; M. du Carla, physicien qui n'est pas sans merite, lut
une tres courte dissertation sur la lumiere zodiacale; M. Carra en
lut une autre beaucoup trop longue sur les vibrations sonifiques
comparees aux vibrations lucifiques, enfin le cher M. Monnet
nous donna je ne sais quoi sur certains petits osselets fossiles,
qu'il a vus, je ne sais ou; c'etait ecrit a peu pres comme il parle.
On lut encore des odes latines et franchises, des vers envoyes
par des correspondants, des extraits de voyage; mais ce qui
parut faire le plus de plaisir a l'assemblee, c'est un fragment de
poesie imitative tire d'un poeme que M. Depiis se propose
sans doute de faire imprimer: ce dernier morceau fut vivement
applaudi. Apres les lectures on donna, comme d'usage, un peu
de musique. II me reste a voir le Musee de M. de la Blancherie;
je tacherai d'y aller jeudi, si on ne donne pas un opera de
Gluck.

APPENDIX 3. THE SOCIETE DE L'HARMONIE
UNIVERSELLE

The society's secret meetings took place in a vast room
decorated with expensive tapestries and mirrors in the Hotel
de Coigny, rue Coq-Heron. Their character is best described
by the Journal of the Baron de Corberon, the French charge
d'affaires in Russia from 1775-1780, who experimented with
every form of mysticism and occultism he could find. The first
part of his journal was published by L.-H. Labande, Un diplomate
francais a la cour de Catherine II, 1775-1780. Journal intime du
Chev. de Corberon, charge d'affaires de France en Russie, 2 vols.
(Paris, 1901). The excerpts from the remaining part of his journal,
transcribed below, come from the Bibliotheque municipale
d'Avignon, mss 3059 and 3060. After a preliminary interview
with Mesmer and a special session for neophytes, Corberon
was inducted into the society on April 5, 1784.

C'est aujourd'hui . . . que j'ai ete recu chez Mesmer;
c'est-a-dire membre de l'harmonie, car on a donne un nom et
des formes de maconnerie a ce qui n'en devait point avoir.
Nous etions 48 environ de recipiendaires. Une grande salle au
premier de l'ancien hotel de Coigny, rue Coq-heron, etait
preparee a cet effet. Beaucoup de lumieres souvent disposees
par trois, eclairaient cette piece. Un arrangement de sieges, de
fauteuils, etc., tout donnait a cette assemblee un petit air de
charlatanerie qui m'a deplu, je l'avoue, mais qui etait peut-etre
necessaire pour bien des gens . . .

Au fond de cette salle il y avait une estrade derriere laquelle
etaient assis les 3 president et vice-presidents; une table devant
eux couverte d'un tapis rouge ainsi que les fauteuils. Mesmer
au milieu, a sa droite M. de Chatelux, a sa gauche M. Duport,
les 2 vice-presidents.

On a fait un petit discours qui ne [signifiait] pas grande
chose sur l'importance de ce que nous allions faire, et toujours
la forme maconnique, les mailles pour faire silence etc. J'oubliais
de dire qu'en avant de l'estrade des presidences, il y avait a
droite un fauteuil et une table pour l'orateur, a gauche de meme
pour le secretaire. Devant et dans le centre deux rangees de
chaises, chacune de 12 ou 15 environ, autour duquel [sic] les
2 rangees de fauteuils, plutot derriere qu'autour; et en troisieme
ligne des banquettes elevees sur lesquelles se sont places les
anciens recus. En face de l'orateur et du secretaire 2 autres
tables et fauteuils auxquelles se sont places 2 autres officiers
de Tordre qui figuraient la ce que sont dans les loges le premier
et le deuxieme surveillant. Voila a-peu-pres la figure ou plan
de cette assemblee.

T3
C

CD

(D

Oil

3

"3

u

Les presidents

Loge de l'harmonie

II y avait sur une glace derriere les presidents un tableau
symbolique et aux deux cotes, c'est-a-dire au-dessus de l'orateur
et de son pendant, un tableau ecrit a la main qui marque ce que
c'est que le magnetisme animal, son application par division
et subdivisions.

[After a speech by the orator, Bergasse] . . . Nous avons
tous leve la main et passe ensuite a tour de role au banc des
presidents ou nous avons recu debout le signe de 1'attouchement.

After his initiation, Corberon attended eleven indoctrination
sessions, whose character may be judged by the following
excerpts from his journal:

April 7: Nous etions tous autour d'une grande table d'un
carre qui pouvait contenir une trentaine de personnes. Une
planche de bois noirci propre a tracer des lignes occupait le
milieu de cette table; elle est la pour tracer des figures analogues
a la demonstration. Un ou deux bateaux de papier y est aussi,
Tun rempli de boules de cire comme des balles de pistolet,
l'autre de limaille de fer. II y a aussi des cartons sur lesquels
sont dessines des figures de petites boules comme celles de
cire rangees dans differents ordres: ces desseins sont relatifs
aux demonstrations de la matiere dont les boules de cire ou
leur figure representent des atomes ou des globules de matiere.
Des bougies, du papier, de l'encre, garnissent le reste de la
table.

Mesmer est place dans le milieu d'une des grandes faces
de la table. Bergasse, orateur de la loge et demonstrates a la
lecon, est vis-a-vis de lui a l'autre face de cette meme table.
Arme d'une verge de cuivre ou d'or, qui n'est pas celle de
Moise, il a pris la parole . . .

182 APPENDIX 3

II y a dans nos assemblies d'instruction un inconvenient,
c'est que le veritable maitre, Mesmer, ne possede pas assez la
langue francaise pour faire l'instruction et en consequence
c'est Bergasse, qui a de la facilite, qui parle. Mais, comme
avec beaucoup d'opinion de lui-meme, il a moins de science
que de jargon, il delaie ce qu'il sait et revient avec complaisance
la-dessus, tandis qu'il coule rapidement sur les choses abstraites
et ne nous en donne pas une idee nette, precise et satisfaisante.

April 9: . . . Dans le courant de cette instruction ou Mesmer
a parle plus qu'aux autres j'ai remarque avec deplaisance que
Bergasse l'interrompait avec l'air de la superiority. Je trouve
qu'il abuse de l'avantage qu'il a sur l'autrichien de manier la
parole, et cela m'a indispose contre lui.

April 12: ... Ce Bergasse est sur le point de rompre avec
Mesmer, et ce n'est pas, m'a-t-on dit, la premiere fois ... En
commen^ant la lecon Bergasse nous a annonce que ce serait
la derniere qu'il ferait d'un ton a faire penser qu'il y avait des
raisons de mecontentement particulier, plus que des affaires
qui Ten empechaient. Le Chevalier Delfino, ambassadeur de
Venise, qui etait a cote de moi, en prit la meme opinion, et me
dit qu'il, ... lui Bergasse, eut deja la meme idee de quitter la
societe par de semblables raisons d'amour-propre et de domina-
tion qui avaient fait naitre des disputes assez vives avec le
Comte Maxime Puysegur, qui fera probablement l'instruction
a sa place.

Corberon reported that Puysegur replaced Bergasse on
April 14 but did a poor job; by April 19 Bergasse had agreed
to continue the lessons. Corberon discontinued the journal
after his eleventh lesson, on April 30. When he took it up
again, in November, he had lapsed in his mesmerist activities
and had become involved with a man called Ruer, who claimed
to possess the philosopher's stone and to be a successor of
Solomon.

183

APPENDIX 4. BERGASSE'S LECTURES
ON MESMERISM

These excerpts come from a lecture by Bergasse entitled
"Idees generates sur le systeme du monde et 1'accord des lois
physiques et morales dans la nature," delivered on July 10,
1785, apparently in his public course on mesmerism following
the schism in the Societe de l'Harmonie. The original, in Ber-
gasse's hand, is in his papers at the Chateau de Villiers, Villiers,
Loir-et-Cher.

[Proposition] 70. De meme que toutes les organisations font
involontairement effort pour parvenir a l'equilibre physique
entre elles, toutes les intelligences et toutes les volontes font
involontairement effort pour parvenir a l'equilibre morale
entre elles.

81. On pourrait appeler magnetisme moral artificiel
toute theorie de moyens inventes pour produire entre les
etres intelligents une harmonie et une reciprocity d'affections
e{ d'habitudes. A cette theorie appartiennent les institutions
politiques et les divers formes d'education imaginees chez
les differents peuples pour assurer la paix et la bonheur de la
societe.

82. On pourrait appeler electricite morale artificielle l'effort
coupable que font un ou plusieurs individus pour detourner
les affections et les habitudes qui les unissent a leurs semblables
et les accumuler sur eux-memes.

86. De meme que connaitre la loi, d'apres laquelle s'exerce le
magnetisme physique universel et la theorie des procedes
qui peuvent developper ou accroitre l'energie de cette loi est
l'objet de Tart de preserver et de guerir ou de la medecine; de
meme aussi connaitre la loi morale universelle d'apres laquelle
est produite l'harmonie des etres intelligents et determiner
dans toutes les circonstances donnees, les institutions, les
coutumes, les prejuges qui peuvent developper ou accroitre
l'energie de cette loi est l'objet de l'art de conduire et de gou-
verner ou de la legislation.

87. Parce que, comme je viens de dire, les lois physiques et
morales du monde, sont tellement ordonnees entre elles qu'ap-
partenant a un seul plan, elles se terminent a un seul resultat,

APPENDIX 4

tout ce qui dans un etre organise et intelligent blesse les lois
morales doit nuire au developpement des lois physiques, tout
ce qui dans un etre organise et intelligent empeche ou detourne
Taction des lois physiques doit affaiblir ou rendre plus difficile
Taction des lois morales.

90. L'homme considere comme un etre moral est bon
lorsque rien n'interrompt les affections et les habitudes qui
le font tendre a Tequilibre moral avec lui-meme et avec ses
semblables.

105. Rien ne prouve plus Texistence d'une intelligence
souveraine qui modere tout dans Tunivers et ne donne une
idee plus sublime de sa sagesse, que la combinaison profonde
et le parfait accord des lois physiques et morales par lesquelles
le meme univers est gouverne.

Bergasse made the following remarks in a speech to the
Societe de THarmonie in 1783. The text, written in his hand
and read during a meeting for the initiation of new members,
was reprinted with extensive changes by Bergasse in Discours
et fragments de M. Bergasse (Paris, 1808). The changes made
it seem much less Rousseauist and deistic than the original
in his papers at Villiers, from which the following excerpts were
taken.

La Nature ne s'est evidemment proposee dans le developpe-
ment de ses lois que de maintenir entre les etres prodigieuse-
ment varies que Timmensite de son systeme embrasse, une
constante et durable harmonie.

. . . Le bien sera pour vous tout ce qui est dans Tharmonie
generate des etres, le mal tout ce qui trouble cette harmonie . . .
Vous apprendrez que cette justice n'est autre chose que cette
grande energie de la Nature qui retablit par un mouvement
general Tharmonie des etres que des mouvements particuliers
ont troubles quelques instants.

[The conscience is] . . . un organe veritable, un organe
d'une sensibilite infinie qui s'unit par des fibres aussi nom-
breuses que deliees a tous les points de Tunivers . . . C'est
par cet organe que nous nous mettons en harmonie avec la
nature, comme c'est par les autres que nous entretenons notre
propre harmonie ... Si dans un etre malade Torgane de la
conscience souffre, le retablissement parfait des organes ordi-
naires est impossible; et vous arriverez ainsi a cette idee lumi-
neuse et premiere, qu r il faut etre bon pour etre absolument
sain ... La pensee du mechant est un obtacle a Taction con-
servatrice de la nature . . . De la . . . une morale emanee de la

BERGASSE'S LECTURES

physique generate du monde . . . De la des regies simples pour
juger les institutions auxquelles nous sommes asservis, des
principes certains pour cohstituer la legislation qui convient
a l'homme dans toutes les circonstances donnees, des lumieres
imprevues sur la legislation des crimes, legislation dont les
idees premieres n'ont pas encore ete seulement apercues,
d'autres moeurs parce qu'il nous faut d'autres lois, des moeurs
douces parce qu'elles ne naitront pas de nos prejuges mais de
nos penchants, des moeurs faciles parce que peu de choses
sont defendues a l'homme de la nature, des moeurs severes,
neanmoins, parce que la nature ne defend rien en vain a l'homme
qui reconnait son empire.

186

APPENDIX 5. THE EMBLEM AND TEXTBOOK
OF THE SOCIETES DE L'HARMONIE

The Societies' emblem shows their view of the physico-
moral laws of nature, and their notebook, written by Bergasse,
shows their use of symbols, which they generally considered
as magic hieroglyphics, capable of communicating primitive
truths. Both come from the mesmerist collection of the Biblio-
theque Nationale, 4° Tb 62.

EMBLEM AND TEXTBOOK

Devise des Smith it PHarmonie.

Obiet central.

Contemplation de .'harmonic da Tunivers,
Connoissance des loix de la nature.

Rapport et influence Rapport et influence de

de to us !es etres, toutes \e% actions*

Physique in iverscHe* Justice umverselle*

Ot I ST PARTICUtlER,

L f Hornrne*

Son Education. Legislation,
Sa Conservation* Justice*

Oi JIT PRATIQVE»

Ijueigner, maintenir et propager le$ precipes,

{SCittti.
fibert*.
Propri4t2»

De La Conservation.

De TEducatlon,
De la M^decine

ou de Part de

gu^rir*

Combattre tet tttexm.

Hutnattitl.
Mod drat ion*
Frugality.
BJenvetlLmce*
Honnttetl,
Exactitude
dans les
procldlf.
S&uritl.
Viraati.
Glnlrosttl.

Empicher {'injustice.

" V*£*«v»**f font l+s m*ir ts # rm**r*<p**%

<*n+rt} mm't *« ■ mt fm 8 *

-but/ tf> i,- <■

tfr ' 1

U+ 9 A B <Um**ni~ T&M * ft* INTV
J y j

a*.^ fa* 9 fi£**»
7 H

« fhu J<* O- iHt J* I f

a* *Jtar+ plus /<• fi M mi

ft*

s i\

yuWV l+s If s<j»it- ph*n<f<\>
0*rt . m rJ%r*n J? ■< r / {

■ A <#B (ftgt£(l«) AW/ /i-rr ofc-

Cmr plt$* B -.^ J i^r* a*M+

Cmfjps M /.vW fm s<>* *nt Ju pn*

'mm,** p*n*r' «r%ir**r Jans It *&\mj A" / O

U.K. ■:.■;>■ . .. *» *.

(Z/ r aft i J a* t m^inS tl.* rapt »

Jfam* pluS Lw 9 **i *rnH**4f

Umt ft* • ' . /

fc IK>*u? V V^ufe^B (i^Wwir #H MM
*tt*:*n it** l**<t

» Arv MM* purh*^ yw4 . «* '

a «6r# fart**** J'un 9 ./«^»/

Q 04 •,-.>■

mm y 0**<*u* J*r fmujk I '*»0O

fu# <W" m<W/ <Jt r*4M**fl«i4 4* pur

r»i ha

m4hr* £v* parties d*t lmu\r Jin+h***
. Cm dNM ^* y <*» «/•»*'

^# /<# Xl4y>/*4*k d< d d Stftti pi*** Mr? ,

.tin/ ■■■ < 1 f$M +<K

^3.1 0r |§ ( W*s4m *m h't*4Knan4 - sur k»ur aa**

i

s

94

188

189

APPENDIX 6. AN ANTIMESMERIST VIEW

Condorcet entitled this essay "Raisons qui m'ont empeche
jusqu'ici de croire au magnetisme animal/ 7 He probably wrote
it in late 1784 or 1785 but never published it. It is in his papers
at the Bibliotheque de l'lnstitut de France, ms 883, fol. 231-247.

Je respecte beaucoup les hommes distingues qui ont achete
le secret de M. Mesmer, parce qu'ils y croyaient d'avance,
et qui ont continue d'y croire.

Mais Bodin croyait aux sorciers. L'imposture grossiere
des vampires attestee par une foule de temoins a eu pour his-
torien le savant Dom Calmet. Jacques Aymar a eu des partisans
illustres; la poudre du chevalier Digby a fait des prodiges sur
des malades de tous les etats. On est etonne des noms qu'on
rencontre au bas des miracles de St. Medard. De nos jours on a
cru a Parangue qui voyait l'eau a travers la terre, ce qui est un
veritable miracle. Parmi les proselites de Swedenborg on trouve
des hommes instruits, occupant des places honorables, et
raisonnables sur toute autre chose.

Les seuls temoins qu'on doive croire sur les faits extra-
ordinaires sont ceux qui en sont les juges competents. II [existe],
dit-on, un fluide universel dont les effets s'etendent depuis
les astres les plus eloignes jusqu'a la terre. Eh bien, je n'y puis
croire que sur l'autorite des physiciens. Ce fluide agit sur le
corps humain. J'exige alors que ces physiciens joignent de la
philosophie a leurs connaissances, parce que je dois me defier
alors de l'imagination et de l'imposture. Ce fluide guerit les
malades sans les toucher ou en les touchant; alors j'ai besoin
que les medecins m'attestent la maladie et la guerison.

Mais le magnetisme animal a ete admire, employe par des
physiciens ou des medecins. J'en conviens, mais il s'agit de me
determiner a croire sur une autorite; cela est dur pour la raison
humaine. Ainsi je n'entends point par physicien ou par medecin
un homme qui a fait des livres de physique ou qui a ete recu
docteur dans quelque faculte. J'entends un homme qui, avant
qu'il fut question du magnetisme, jouissait en France, en
Europe meme, d'une reputation bien etablie. Voila Tespece
de temoignage qu'il me faut pour croire un fait extraordinaire
de physique ou de medecine.

Mais il faut encore que ce temoignage ne soit pas balance
par des temoignages contraires, a egalite de merite et d'autorite.
Un seul homme qui, admis a voir les memes faits, ou ne les

190 APPENDIX 6

voit pas ou n'y voit point le merveilleux qu'on y veut voir,
balancera ceux qui auront vu.

Parce que la circonspection qui ne voit point trompe rare-
ment et que l'enthousiasme qui veut croire trompe souvent.

D'apres ces principes, on voit qu'il est impossible de croire
au magnetisme animal, soit de M. Deslon, soit de M. Mesmer.

Examinons maintenant si, malgre la saintete du secret,
ces messieurs n'en ont pas assez dit ou assez laisse voir pour
oter toute espece de motif de croire.

C'est l'imagination qui seule produit les effets attribues
au magnetisme: qui me l'a dit? M. Mesmer lui-meme et ses
partisans, qui ont employe ouvertement tous les moyens connus
pour exciter l'imagination: appareil merveilleux, postures
bizarres ou contraintes, langage extraordinaire, reunion d'un
grand nombre d'individus, des attouchements legers qui,
dans des individus sensibles, produisent un effet qui les etonne
et reveille l'activite de leur imagination.

L/approche du doigt produit meme a une petite distance une
sensation [illegible word] et fugitive qui devient un leger
chatouillement lorsqu'on a une forte attention; [une] heureuse
credulite et Timagination se chargent du reste. Des femmes
vapoureuses sont magnetisees par des hommes, et il n'y a
point de medecin eclaire, de physicien instruit qui ne sache
combien il en peut resulter de choses merveilleuses, en sup-
posant meme dans les magnetiseurs l'innocence la plus complete.

Quelques personnes ont ose parler de charlatanisme, mais
ces malades soumis a la volonte du magnetiseur, les catalepti-
ques qui n'en voient que mieux quand ils ont perdu la vue,
ces malades qui devinent les maladies, tout cela n'a-t-il point
la plus grande ressemblance aux fameuses histoires de demoni-
aques dont les livres sont pleins? Nicole de Vervins, Marthe
Brossier, les Urselines de Loudun n'ont pas fait de choses moins
merveilleuses.

Les raisonnements des magnetiseurs contre les prejuges
des savants, ne sont-ils pas absolument les memes que ceux
des charlatans les plus celebres? L/exemple le plus frappant
de l'opposition aux verites physiques ou medicaies est celui
de [Harvey?]. On a remarque qu'aucun medecin age de quarante
ans lors de sa decouverte ne consentit a la croire. Mais un grand
nombre de physiciens y crurent sans peine. L'exemple de
Newton ne prouverait rien ici; personne ne nia ses decouvertes.
On persista seulement a vouloir les expliquer par des tourbil-
lons; et on ne citera pas une seule decouverte qui n'ait ete
reconnue en tres peu de temps par la pluralite des savants;

AN ANTIMESMERIST VIEW

et pas une des pretendues decouvertes rejetee par eux qui
n'ait ete reconnue pour une chimere.

La maniere dont les magnetiseurs defendent leur doctrine
me parait encore un violent prejuge contre eux. Par exemple,
ils parlent de fluide magnetique, et ils ignorent que l'existence
de ce fluide est bien loin d'etre generalement reconnue. Ils
donnent l'influence de la lune sur le corps humain pour une
verite avouee, et ni cette influence, ni les faits sur lesquels ils
l'appuient ne sont admis. Ils comparent cette influence a Taction
qui produit les marees, et ils ignorent que cette action a ete
soumise au calcul et qu'il resulte de ce calcul que cette action
est nulle.

Parmi les personnes qui ont des secrets, les unes avouent
franchement qu'elles les gardent pour s'enrichir; si cela n'est
pas noble, cela n'est pas injuste: et, en verite, l'exacte justice
est si rare, et si on l'observait, le genre humain se trouverait
si bien qu'on ferait fort bien de ne rien exiger de plus des
hommes, du moins de sitot.

Les autres disent qu'il y aurait du danger a reveler leur
secret. Quelques uns le conservent pour que les etrangers, les
ennemis de leur pays n'en profitent point. Ces derniers motifs
sont suspects. Toutes les fois qu'un homme fait une chose
utile a ses interets, il peut s'ouvrir a ses amis sur les motifs
plus nobles qui peuvent l'inspirer, mais il ne doit jamais les
dire au public, qui ne peut le croire.

D'ailleurs, comment ce secret si utile serait-il dangereux,
s'il etait connu? Ne Test-il pas davantage en restant secret?
S'il est public, ne trouvera-t-on pas les moyens de s'en de-
fendre? Supposez la poudre a canon connue d'une seule nation,
n'aurait-elle pas reduit toutes les autres a 1'esclavage; les pos-
sesseurs du secret, ne seraient-ils pas les maitres absolus de
leur nation? Est-il possible de garder ce secret et cependant de
le repandre assez pour qu'il soit utile?

Comme M. Mesmer est mecontent des academies, nous
prendrons la liberte de raconter ici une petite anecdote. Un
homme qui avait trouve la quadrature du cercle se plaignait
qu'on ne voulut pas l'examiner. "Mais," lui dit un academicien,
"Ces examens font perdre inutilement beaucoup de temps."
"Cela est bon pour les autres," dit le quadrateur, "N'examinez
que la mienne; elle est seule bonne."

M. Mesmer veut-il que les gens sans prejuges croient a
la realite de son agent, ou veut-il ne persuader que ses malades?

S'il veut convaincre les gens sans prejuges, que son cabinet
soit ouvert aux physiciens, que la, sans malades et n'ayant pour

192 APPENDIX 6

temoins que ceux qui ont bien voulu s'y rendre, il fasse des
experiences bien simples, bien convaincantes; peu a peu il
verra arriver successivement chez lui tous les hommes eclaires
selon qu'ils sont plus ou moins disposes a croire. II entendra
leurs objections, il trouvera les moyens de les detruire.

Ne veut-il persuader que les malades? II n'a rien a faire
que ce qu'il a fait.

J'en demande pardon a M. Mesmer, je n'ai jamais cru, ni
aux grandes decouvertes qu'on garde dans son portefeuille,
ni aux inventions dont on ne s'empresse point de prouver la
realite, ni aux complots des savants contre les nouvelles de-
couvertes. Messieurs les inventeurs, si vous vous defiez de
leur zele pour la verite, croyez au moins a leur orgeuil; ils ne
demanderont pas mieux que de connaitre ce que vous avez
decouvert, et ils ne douteront pas d'en tirer bientot plus de
verites que vous-meme.

193

APPENDIX 7. FRENCH PASSAGES TRANSLATED
IN THE TEXT

Because the quotations in the text come, for the most part,
from obscure sources and because it would be a pity for the
reader to miss the flavor of the French, they are given here as
they appeared in the original versions, with spelling modernized.

Page 13 On suppose que la nuit du songe de la dame
d'Aiguemerre etait une nuit d'ete, que sa fenetre
etait ouverte, son lit expose au couchant, sa cou-
verture en desordre et que le zephyr du sud-ouest,
dument impregne de molecules organiques de
foetus humains, d'embryons flottants, l'avait
fecondee.

Page 16 C'est sur les choses qu'on ne peut ni voir, ni palper,
qu'il est important de se tenir en garde contre les
ecarts de l'imagination.

Page 17 II a du en couter pour convenir que de l'eau ne fut
pas de l'eau mais bien de l'air . . . Nous avons un
element de moins.

Page 18 Les poumons sont dans l'homme et dans les animaux
la machine electrique par leur mouvement continuel,
en separant de l'air le feu, lequel s'insinue dans
le sang et se porte, par ce moyen, au cerveau qui le
distribue, l'impulse et en forme les esprits animaux
qui circulent dans les nerfs pour tous les mouve-
ments volontaires et involontaires.

Page 20 II est impossible de rendre ce moment; les femmes
en pleurs, tout le peuple levant les mains au ciel et
gardant un silence profond; les voyageurs, le corps
en dehors de la galerie, saluant et poussant des
cris de joie. On les suit des yeux, on les appelle
comme s'ils pouvaient entendre, et au sentiment
d'effroi succede celui de l'admiration; on ne disait
autre chose, sinon, "Grand Dieu que c'est beau";
grande musique militaire se faisait entendre, des
boites annoncaient leur gloire.

194 APPENDIX 7

Page 22 Ce furent quelques ouvriers mecontents cTavoir
perdu leur journee et de n'avoir rien vu.

les dieux de l'antiquite porter sur des nuages; les
fables se sont realisees par les prodiges de la
physique.

Les decouvertes incroyables qui se multiplient
depuis dix ans ... les phenomenes de l'electricite
approfondis, la transformation des elements, les
airs decomposes et connus, les rayons du soleil
condenses, l'air que l'audace humaine ose parcourir,
mille autres phenomenes enfin ont prodigieusement
etendu la sphere de nos connaissances. Qui sait
jusqu'oii nous pouvons aller? Quel mortel oserait
proscrire des bornes a l'esprit humain . . . ?

Page 24 L'amour du merveilleux nous seduit done toujours;

parce que, sentant confusement combien nous
ignorons les forces de la nature, tout ce qui nous
conduit a quelques decouvertes en ce genre est
recu avec transport.

Dans tous nos cercles, dans tous nos soupers, aux
toilettes de nos jolies femmes, comme dans nos
lycees academiques, il n'est plus question que
d'experiences, d'air atmospherique, de gaz inflam-
mable, de chars volants, de voyages aeriens.

Page 26 Depuis que le gout des sciences a commence a se
repandre parmi nous, on a vu le public s'occuper
successivement de physique, d'histoire naturelle,
de chimie; et non seulement s'interesser a leurs
progres, mais encore se livrer avec ardeur a leur
etude: il se porte en foule aux ecoles ou elles sont
enseignees; il s'empresse de lire les ouvrages dorit
elles sont le sujet; il recueille avec avidite tout ce
qui lui en rappelle le souvenir; et il y a peu de per-
sonnes riches chez lesquelles on ne trouve quelques
uns des instruments propres a ces sciences utiles.

aujourd'hui surtout que Ton cherche avec empresse-
ment tout ce qui a rapport a quelque decouverte.

Page 27 On n'a plus pour la litterature qu'une froide estime
qui approche de Tindifference, tandis que les
sciences . . . excitent un enthousiasme universel.
La physique, la chimie, l'histoire naturelle sont
devenues des passions.

FRENCH PASSAGES 195

Page 28 Lorsque des phenomenes visibles et frappants
dependent d'une cause insensible et inconnue,
l'esprit humain, toujours porte au merveilleux,
attribue naturellement ces effets a une cause
chimerique.

car je n'aime les vers que lorsqu'ils habillent un
peu de physique ou de metaphysique.

Page 32 une belle occasion . . . pour les naturalistes des
deux mondes.

Ces experiences ont tellement renverse les tetes
faibles, qu'il n'est pas de jour sans projet plus ou
moins extravagant, que Ton cite et que Ton accredite.

Page 33 Des remedes secrets de toute espece se distribuent
journellement, malgre la rigueur des defenses.

philosophes hermetiques, cabalistiques, theosophes,
propagant avec fanatisme toutes les anciennes
absurdites de la theurgie, de la divination, de
l'astrologie etc.

Page 38 ce langage sentimental qui nous fait communiquer
nos pensees d'un pole a l'autre.

Rien n'est plus lumineux: c'est le vrai systeme de
l'univers, le mobile de toutes choses.

la physique prendrait partout la place de la magie.

Au-dessus de la science est la magie, parce que
celle-ci est une suite de l'autre, non comme effet,
mais comme perfection de la science.

Page 40 une epidemie qui a gagne toute la France.

Hommes, femmes, enfants, tout s'en mele, tout
magnetise.

Le magnetisme occupe toutes les tetes. On est
etourdi de ses prodiges, et si Ton se permet de
douter encore des effets ... on n'ose plus nier au
moins son existence.

Le grand objet des entretiens de la capitale est
toujours le magnetisme animal.

on ne s'occupe que du magnetisme animal . . .

Page 42 II [Pilatre] fut sourd a ma voix, et, comme un autre
Cassandre, je criai dans le desert.

196 APPENDIX 7

Page 55 Enfin, le celebre auteur de la decouverte du mag-
netisme animal a fait pour l'amour, ce que Newton
fit pour le systeme du monde.

demon dont je suis possede; c'est ce coquin de
Mesmer qui m'a ensorcele.

Page 59 Aucun evenement, pas meme la Revolution, ne
m'a laisse des lumieres aussi vives que le mag-
netisme.

Page 60 Quant a l'electricite, j'ai une machine electrique
qui m'amuse extremement tous ces jours; mais
elle m'etonne bien davantage; jamais les effets du
magnetisme ne m'ont autant frappe: si quelque
chose acheve de me confirmer l'existence d'un fluide
universel, agent unique par les diverses modifica-
tions de tant de phenomenes divers, ce sera ma
machine electrique. Elle me parle le meme langage
que Mesmer sur la nature, et je l'ecoute avec ravisse-
ment.

Car enfin qui sommes-nous, Monsieur, dans nos
sentiments les plus exquis, comme dans nos plus
vastes pensees, qui sommes-nous sinon une orgue
plus ou moins admirable, composee de plus ou
moins de jeux, mais dont le soufflet ne fut et ne sera
jamais ni dans la glande pineale de Descartes, ni
dans la substance medullaire de la (illegible name),
ni dans le diaphragme ou l'ont place certains
reveurs, mais dans le principe meme qui meut
tout l'univers. L'homme avec sa liberte ne marche
qu'a la cadence de toute la nature, et toute la nature
ne marche qu'a celle d'une cause unique; et quelle
est cette cause unique sinon un fluide vraiment
universel et qui penetre la nature entiere?

Page 62 ... sera bientot la seule medecine universelle.

Jamais le tombeau de Saint Medard n'attira plus de
monde et n'opera des choses plus extraordinaires,
que le mesmerisme. II merite enfin Tattention du
gouvernement.

Page 65 cet arme d'un effet si sur parmi nous.

Magistrat, mais eleve de M. Mesmer, si ma position
personelle ne me permet plus de lui preter directe-

FRENCH PASSAGES 197

ment le secours des lois, au moins lui dois-je, au
nom de l'humanite, sur sa personne et sur sa
decouverte, un temoignage public de mon admira-
tion et de ma reconnaissance, et je le donne.

Page 66 Elle resiste meme aux traits les plus sanglants du
ridicule. Si la capitale s'egaie des scenes vraiment
tres comiques du baquet, la province les a prises au
serieux: la sont les adeptes vraiment chauds.

Vous ne sauriez croire quels progres rapides fait
dans cette ville le magnetisme. Tout le monde s'en
mele.

Page 67 J'ai employe beaucoup de moyens pour etre instruit
. . . et j'ai acquis la conviction non seulement de
l'existence mais de l'utilite de cet agent; et comme
je suis anime du desir de procurer a notre bonne
ville tous les avantages possibles, j'ai concu a cet
egard quelques vues que je vous communiquerai
quand elles seront un peu digerees.

Page 70 Jetez, mes freres, les yeux sur le tableau harmonique
de TOrdre, qui couvre ce mysterieux baquet. C'est
la Table Isiaque, une des antiquites des plus re-
marquables, oil le mesmerisme se voit dans tout
son jour, dans l'ecriture symbolique de nos pre-
miers peres en magnetisme animal et dont les seuls
mesmeriens ont la clef.

II est certain que jamais les rose-croix, les adeptes,
les prophetes et tout ce qui s'y rapporte, ne furent
aussi nombreux, aussi ecoutes. La conversation
roule presque uniquement sur ces matieres; elles
occupent toutes les tetes; elles frappent toutes les
imaginations ... En regardant autour de nous,
nous ne voyons que des sorciers, des adeptes, des
necromanciens et des prophetes. Chacun a le sien,
sur lequel il compte.

Page 73 des personnes de tous les rangs, unies par le meme
lien.

Que la fierte des gens de haut rang soit choquee du
melange d'etats et de conditions que Ton trouve
chez moi cela ne m'etonne pas; mais je n'y sais rien.
Mon humanite est de tous les rangs.

198 APPENDIX 7

Les portes se ferment; on se place par ordre de
souscription; et le petit bourgeois qui se croit pour
un moment 1'egal d'un cordon bleu, oublie ce que
va lui couter un siege de velours cramoisi borde
de Tor.

48 personnes, parmi lesquelles on compte 18
gentilshommes presque tous d'un rang eminent;
2 chevaliers de Malte; un avocat d'un merite rare;
4 medecins; 2 chirurgiens, 7 a 8 banquiers ou
negociants ou qui l'ont ete; 2 ecclesiastiques; 3
moines.

Page 74 respect aveugle qui est du au gouvernement:
n'avons-nous pas dit que tout action, meme toute
pensee qui tend a troubler l'ordre de la societe,
etait contraire a l'harmonie de la nature . . .

seigneur du chateau, sans appret, comme sans
inquietude ne parait que pour maintenir l'ordre et
recevoir l'hommage.

Page 76 On me demanda des reglements pour cette societe,
a laquelle on donna d'abord, bien malgre moi, la
ridicule denomination de loge.

Page 77 il y a bien des aimables de Paris qui aimeraient
autant Bergassiser que mesmeriser.

Page 78 J'ai renverse toutes les bases de son systeme et j'ai
eleve sur les mines de ce systeme un edifice, je
crois, beaucoup plus vaste et plus solidement
construit.

la morale universelle, sur les principes de la legisla-
tion, sur l'education, les moeurs, les arts etc.

Page 79 Bergasse ne me cacha pas qu'en elevant un autel
au magnetisme, il n'avait en vue que d 7 en elever
un a la liberte/'Le temps est arrive, me disait-il,
oil la France a besoin d'une revolution. Mais
vouloir l'operer ouvertement, c'est vouloir echouer;
il faut, pour reussir, s'envelopper du mystere; il
faut reunir les hommes sous pretexte d'experiences
physiques, mais, dans la verite, pour renverser le
despotisme." Ce fut dans cette vue qu'il forma dans
la maison de Kornmann, ou il demeurait, une
societe composee des hommes qui annoncaient

FRENCH PASSAGES 199

leur gout pour les innovations politiques. De ce
nombre etaient Lafayette, Depremesnil [sic],
Sabathier etc. 11 y avait une autre societe moins
nombreuse d'ecrivains qui employaient leur plume
a preparer cette revolution. C'etait dans les diners
qu'on agitait les questions les plus importantes.
J'y prechais la republique; mais, a l'exception de
Claviere, personne ne la goutait. Depremesnil ne
voulait debourbonailler la France (c'etait son mot)
que pour y faire regner le Parlement. Bergasse
voulait un roi et les deux chambres, mais il voulait
surtout faire le plan seul, et que ce plan fut rigou-
reusement execute: sa manie etait de se croire un
Lycurgue.

On ne peut disconvenir que les efforts de Ber-
gasse et ceux de la societe qui se rassemblait chez
lui n'aient singulierement contribue a accelerer la
Revolution. On ne peut calculer toutes les brochures
sorties de son sein. C'est de ce foyer que partirent
presque tous les ecrits publies en 1787 et 1788 contre
le ministere, et il faut rendre justice a Kornmann:
il consacra une partie de sa fortune a ces publica-
tions. On en dut plusieurs a Gorsas, qui essayait
alors la plume satirique avec laquelle il a si souvent
dechire le monarchisme, l'autocratie, le feuillan-
tisme et l'anarchie. Carra se distinguait aussi dans
ces combats, auxquels je pris quelque part.

Page 84 [Vous] exercez sans cesse le despotisme le plus
complet dont 1'homme soit capable . . . Vous devenez
des souverains absolus chez le peuple malade.

On vous l'a dit cent fois: en criant contre le despo-
tisme, vous en etes les plus fermes appuis, vous en
exercez vous-memes un revoltant.

II importe d'y maintenir, comme un moyen con-
stant de civilisation, tous les prejuges qui peuvent
rendre la medecine respectable . . . Le corps des
medecins est un corps politique, dont la destinee
est liee avec celle de l'Etat . . . Ainsi dans l'ordre
social, il nous faut absolument des maladies, des
drogues et des lois, et les distributeurs des drogues
et des maladies influent peut-etre autant sur les
habitudes d'une nation que les depositaires des lois.

200 APPENDIX 7

la politique de l'Etat, auquel il importe de conserver
ces deux corps.

Page 85 la destruction de cette science fatale, la plus ancienne
superstition de l'univers, de cette medecine tyran-
nique qui, saisissant l'homme des le berceau, pise
sur lui comme un prejuge religieux.

Page 86 rappela l'autorite a sa circonspection et a sa pru-
dence ordinaires; et des ce moment le magnitisme
et son auteur n'eurent plus de persecution publique
a redouter.

En 1780 a commence a Paris la vogue du magne-
tisme. La police avait a prendre sur cette pratique
ancienne . . . par rapport a la pratique des moeurs . . .
Le gouvernement n'y opposa [que] de l'indifference
pendant la vie de M. de Maurepas. Cependant
quelque temps apres sa mort, la police fut avertie
par des lettres anonymes que Ton tenait dans les
assemblies des magnetiseurs, des discours sedi-
tieux contre la religion et contre le gouvernement.
L'un des ministres du Roi proposa alors sur la
denonciation de la police de renvoyer hors du
royaume l'etranger Mesmer . . . D'autres ministres
furent d'avis, et plus ecoutes, que c'etait au Parle-
ment que devaient etre poursuivies toutes sectes et
assemblies illicites, immorales, irreligieuses. Je
fus charge de provoquer le procureur general. Ce
magistrat me repondit que s'il portait sa plainte
contre les assemblies du magnetisme a la Grande
Chambre, elle serait renvoyee aux chambres assem-
blies ou il se trouverait des partisans et protecteurs
du magnitisme. II ne fut done aucune poursuite.

Page 88 Que pensera Washington quand il saura que vous
etes devenu le premier garcon apothicaire de
Mesmer?

Un docteur allemand, nommi Mesmer, ayant fait
la plus grande dicouverte sur le magnitisme animal,
a formi des ileves, parmi lesquels votre humble
serviteur est appeli Tun des plus enthousiastes. —
J'en sais autant qu'un sorcier en sut jamais . . . Avant
de partir, j'obtiendrai la permission de vous confier
le secret de Mesmer, qui, vous pouvez y croire, est
une grande dicouverte philosophique.

FRENCH PASSAGES 201

Page 89 On trouve du plaisir a descendre, tant qu'on croit
remonter des qu'on veut; et, sans prevoyance, nous
goutions tout a la fois les avantages du patriciat
et les douceurs d'une philosophic plebeienne.

Page 91 L'empire des sciences ne doit connaitre ni despotes,
ni aristocrates, ni electeurs. II offre l'image d'une
republique parfaite. La, le merite est le seul titre
pour y etre honore. Admettre un despote, ou des
aristocrates, ou des electeurs . . . c'est violer la nature
des choses, la liberte de l'esprit humain; c'est
attenter a l'opinion publique, qui seule a le droit
de couronner le genie; c'est introduire un despo-
tisme revoltant.

Page 92 Vous savez, mon tres cher, la place que vous occu-
pez dans mon coeur.

Les ames franches et droites comme la votre ne
connaissent pas toutes les routes tortueuses des
satellites d'un despote, ou plutot elles les dedaignent.

Page 94 On a besoin du zele d'un ami quand on a a com-
battre une si puissante faction.

Je m'occuperai de M. Mesmer, et vous en rendrai
bon compte. Mais ce n'est pas l'affaire du moment.
Vous savez combien j'aime a examiner les choses,
et a les examiner avec soin avant de prononcer.

courageusement renverse l'idole du culte academi-
que, et substitue au systeme de Newton sur la
lumiere de faits bien prouves.

Page 95 Je viens vous donner une lecon, Messieurs, j'en ai
le droit; je suis independant et il n'est aucun de
vous qui ne soit esclave: je ne tiens a aucun corps,
et vous tenez au votre; je ne tiens a aucun prejuge,
et vous etes enchaines par ceux de votre corps, par
ceux de toutes les personnes en place que vous
reverez bassement comme des Idoles, quoique
vous les meprisez en secret.

Page 96 Un fait extraordinaire est un fait qui ne se lie point
a la chaine de ceux que nous connaissons ou des
lois que nous avons fabriquees. Mais devons-nous
croire que nous les connaissons tous?

portait le peuple, les malheureux dans son coeur.

202 APPENDIX 7

Mais moi qui suis pere et qui crains les medecins,
j'aime le magnetisme parce qu'il m'identifie avec
mes enfants. Quelle douceur pour moi . . . quand je
les vois obeissants a ma voix interieure, se courber,
tomber dans mes bras et gouter le sommeil! L'etat
de mere nourrice est un etat de magnetisme per-
petuel. Nous peres infortunes que les affaires
trainent, nous ne sommes presque rien pour nos
enfants; par le magnetisme nous devenons peres
encore une fois. Voila done un nouveau bien, cree
dans la societe, et elle en a tant besoin!

lueurs sublimes . . . au-dela de notre globe, dans un
meilleur monde.

presque tous les vrais philosophes, et surtout
Rousseau. Lisez ses Dialogues avec lui-meme. lis
semblent ecrits dans un autre monde. L'auteur qui
n'existe que dans celui-ci, qui n'en a jamais franchi
les limites, n'en ecrirait pas deux phrases.

Page 97 Ne voyez-vous pas, par exemple, que le magnetisme
est un moyen de rapprocher les etats, de rendre les
riches plus humains, d'en faire de vrais peres aux
pauvres? Ne seriez-vous pas edifie en voyant des
hommes du premier rang . . . veiller sur la sante de
leurs domestiques, passer des heures entieres a
les magnetiser.

cherche a enflammer le gouvernement contre les
partisans du magnetisme.

Je crains bien que l'habitude du despotisme n'ait
ossifie vos ames. bas parasites oppresseurs de
la patrie viles adulateurs . . . des grands, des riches,
des princes demi-talents qui se mettent perpe-
tuellement en avant et repoussent le vrai talent
qui se cache.

Si sur votre chemin se trouve un de ces hommes
libres, independants . . . vous le louez, vous le
plaignez, mais vous faites entendre que sa plume
est dangereuse, que le gouvernement l'a proscrite,
que sa proscription pouvait entrainer celle du
journal.

pour de l'argent vous amusez done les femmes de
bon ton et les jeunes gens ennuyes qui prennent

FRENCH PASSAGES 203

une lecon de litterature ou d'histoire comme une
lecon de danse et d'escrime.

Page 98 C'est la surtout que vous avez deploye votre esprit
d'intrigue, votre despotisme imperieux, vos ma-
noeuvres aupres des grands et des femmes.

Page 99 Cest un genie createur; il explique tout par la force
centrifuge, jusqu'a l'odeur d'une fleur.

des absurdites et les reveries d'un imbecile.

Excepte quelques hommes privilegies de la nature
et de la raison, les autres ne sont pas faits pour me
comprendre.

des crocodiles monstrueux, vomissant des flammes
de tous cotes: leurs yeux sont rouges de sang: ils
tuent de leur seul regard.

Page 100 purger cette meme terre des monstres qui la
devorent.

Page 101 d'ouvrir au merite la vpie des dignites, des hon-
neurs.

Quel foyer puissant que celui de l'ambition! Heureux
l'Etat ou, pour etre le premier, il ne faut qu'etre
le plus grand en merite.

II faut nous rendre notre liberte; il faut nous ouvrir
toutes les carrieres.

Page 102 On sait quelle est ma fortune, on n'ignore pas
qu'elle me met au-dessus de toute espece de besoins,
qu'elle me rend absolument independant.

Avant qu'il ait plu a ce bon peuple de vouloir etre
libre, j'avais un capital de cinq a six mille livres de
rente et de plus un interet dans la maison de mes
freres me rapportant annuellement dix mille livres
et devant par la suite me rapporter davantage.

Page 103 En general tous les privileges exclusifs sont favora-
bles a quelques genres d'aristocratie; il n'est que le
Roi et le peuple dont Tinteret constant soit general.

II faut etre bien anterieur au quatorzieme siecle
pour pretendre exercer pres du trone cet aristo-
cratisme qui determine dans quel ordre le Roi doit
choisir les serviteurs de sa maison et de son armee.

204 APPENDIX 7

Page 104 En essayant ainsi d'oter aux pretensions de l'antique
aristocratie l'influence plus lucrative que le pouvoir
passe, comment esperez vous reussir?

Vous n'aurez pour vous que la loi, le peuple et le
Roi.

Page 108 Les memes effets ont lieu, a chaque instant, dans
la societe, et Ton ne s'est pas encore avise, je pense,
d'y attacher cette importance, parce qu'on n'a pas
encore assez lie le moral au physique.

car le grand systeme physique de l'univers qui
regit le systeme moral et politique du genre hu-
main, est lui-meme une veritable republique.

Page 110 Celui-ci n'est plus un roi; celui-la est toujours un
berger; ou pour mieux dire ceux ne sont plus que
deux hommes dans le veritable etat d'egalite, deux
amis dans le veritable etat de societe. La difference
politique a disparu ... La nature, l'egalite ont
reclame tous leurs droits . . . Cest a vous, mes
semblables, mes freres ... a diriger, sur ce plan
la marche de votre volonte particuliere pour en
conduire le resultat au centre du bonheur commun.

Le globe entier semble se preparer, par une revolu-
tion marquee dans la marche des saisons, a des
changements physiques ... La masse des societes
s'agite, plus que jamais, pour debrouiller enfin le
chaos de sa morale et de sa legislation.

Page 111 II affectait alors de porter la doctrine du magne-
tisme animal au plus haut degre d'illumination;
il y voyait tout la medecine, la morale, l'economie
politique, la philosophie, l'astronomie, le passe,
le present a toutes les distances et meme le futur;
tout cela ne remplissait que quelques facettes de sa
vaste vision mesmerienne.

II viendra sans doute un temps, ou Ton sera con-
vaincu que le grand principe de la sante physique
est l'egalite entre tous les etres, et l'independance
des opinions et des volontes.

Page 112 Quand le plus fervent apotre du magnetisme, M.

Bergasse, a pulverise votre rapport dans ses pro-
fondes considerations, vous avez dit: c'est une tete
exaltee.

FRENCH PASSAGES 205

ecraser l'homme de genie independant. Mais on le
loue en le peignant ainsi, car dire qu'un homme
est exalte, c'est dire que ses idees sortent de la
sphere des idees ordinaires, qu'il a des vertus
publiques sous un gouvernement corrompu, de
l'humanite parmi des barbares, du respect pour les
droits de rhomme sous le despotisme . . . Et tel
est dans la verite le portrait de M. Bergasse.

Page 113 une science nouvelle, celle de l'influence du moral
sur le physique.

Quoi! ces phenomenes physiques et moraux que
j'admire tous les jours sans les comprendre, ont
pour cause le meme agent . . . Tous les etres sont
done mes freres et la nature n'est done qu'une
mere commune!

Page 114 qui s'unit par des fibres aussi nombreuses que
deliees a tous les points de l'univers . . . C'est par
cet organe que nous nous mettons en harmonie
avec la nature.

des regies simples pour juger les institutions aux-
quelles nous sommes asservis, des principes cer-
tains pour constituer la legislation qui convient
a Thomme dans toutes les circonstances donnees.

Page 115 Rien ne s'accorde mieux avec les notions que nous
nous sommes faites d'un Etre supreme, rien ne
prouve plus sa sagesse profonde, que le monde
forme en consequence d'une idee unique, mu par
une seule loi.

L'attraction est une vertu occulte, une propriete
inherente, on ne sait comment, dans la matiere.

II existe un principe incree: Dieu. II existe dans la
Nature deux principes crees: la matiere et le mouve-
ment.

Le magnetisme animal, entre les mains de M.
Mesmer, ne parait autre chose que la nature meme.

Page 116 II en resulte que le mouvement est imprime par
Dieu, ce qui est incontestable et une reponse aussi
simple que forte contre l'atheisme.

Page 117 Je m'y sentais plus pres de la nature . . . O nature,
m'ecriais-je dans ces acces, que me veux-tu?

206 APPENDIX 7

transmettre a l'humanite dans toute la purete que
je l'avais recu de la Nature, le bienfaisant inappre-
ciable que j'avais en main.

Sans cesse ils insistaient sur la felicite des premiers
ages, sur les prejuges, la corruption du monde
actuel, sur la necessite d'une revolution, d'une
reforme generate.
Page 118 Nos propos ont ete plus graves lorsqu'il s'est jete
sur l'article des moeurs et de la constitution actuelle
des gouvernements . . . Nous touchons, a-t-il ajoute,
a quelque grande revolution.

Vous n'etes pas la premiere qui m'ayez trouve quel-
ques ressemblances avec votre bon ami Jean-
Jacques. Seulement il y a quelques principes qu'il
n'a pas connus, et qui l'eussent rendu moins
malheureux.

Par le mot societe il ne faut pas entendre la societe
telle qu'elle existe maintenant . . . mais la societe telle
qu'elle doit etre, la societe naturelle, celle qui resulte
des rapports que notre organisation bien ordonnee
doit produire ... La regie de la societe est l'harmonie.

M. Bergasse pour parler de la constitution et des
droits de l'homme, nous faisait remonter aux temps
de la Nature, a l'etat sauvage.

Page 120 Tout changement, toute alteration dans notre con-
stitution physique, produisent done infailliblement
un changement, une alteration dans notre consti-
tution morale. II ne faut done quelquefois qu'epurer
ou corrompre le regime physique d'une nation pour
operer une revolution dans ses moeurs.

Page 121 Nous devons a nos institutions presque tous les
maux physiques auxquels nous sommes en proie.

Nous n'appartenons presque plus a la nature . . .
L'enfant qui nait aujourd'hui appartenant a une
organisation modifiee depuis plusieurs siecles par
les habitudes . . . de la societe, doit toujours porter
en Iui des germes de depravation plus ou moins
considerables.

C'est surtout a la campagne et dans la classe de la
societe la plus malheureuse et la moins depravee
que seront d'abord recueillis les fruits de la de-

FRENCH PASSAGES 207

couverte que j'ai faite; c'est la qu'il est aise de
replacer l'homme sous l'empire des lois conserva-
trices de la nature.

L'homme du peuple, l'homme qui vit aux champs,
quand il est malade, guerit plus vite et mieux que
l'homme qui vit dans le monde.

Page 122 En harmonie avec lui-meme, avec tout ce qui l'envi-
ronne, il se deploie dans la nature, si Ton peut se
servir de ce terme, et c'est le seul terme dont on
puisse se servir ici, comme l'arbrisseau qui etend
des fibres vigoureuses dans un sol fecond et facile.

Page 123 l'independance primitive dans laquelle la Nature
nous a fait naitre.

un moyen d'enerver l'espece humaine, de la reduire
a n'avoir que le degre de force necessaire pour porter
avec docilite le joug des institutions sociales.

Page 124 une institution qui appartient autant a la politique
qu'a la nature.

Si par hasard le magnetisme animal existait ... a
quelle revolution, je vous le demande, Monsieur,
ne faudrait-il pas nous attendre? Lorsqu'a notre
generation epuisee par des maux de toute espece
et par les remedes inventes pour la delivrer de ces
maux, succederait une generation hardie, vigou-
reuse, et qui ne connaitrait d'autres lois pour se
conserver, que celles de la Nature: que deviendraient
nos habitudes, nos arts, nos coutumes . . . Une
organisation plus robuste nous rappelerait a l'inde-
pendance; quand avec une autre constitution, il
nous faudrait d'autre moeurs, . . . comment pour-
rions nous supporter le joug des institutions qui
nous regissent aujourd'hui?

Page 131 que la revolution politique de la France est pure-
ment initiatoire d'une revolution religieuse, morale,
politique et universelle dans toute la terre.

Les sectes d'illumines augmentent, au lieu de
diminuer; peut-etre n'est-ce qu'un resultat des
circonstances politiques de la France, qui rallie a
leur doctrine mysterieuse les hommes mecontents
du nouvel ordre des choses, et qui esperent y
trouver des moyens de le detruire.

208 APPENDIX 7

Page 132 Dieu est le cerveau materiel et intellectuel du grand
animal unique, du Tout, dont l'intelligence est un
fluide reel, comme la lumiere, mais encore plus
subtil, puisqu'il ne contacte aucun de nos sens
externes, et qu'il n'agit que sur le sens interieur.

Page 133 repandre enfin les principes de cette divine har-
monie qui doit faire concerter la Nature avec la
Societe.

Leur force motrice, cachee, fondamentale, vous
apprendra que la parole libre et pure, image ardente
de la verite, saura tout eclairer par sa chaleur active,
tout aimanter par sa puissance attractive, electriser
d'excellents conducteurs, organiser les hommes, les
nations et l'univers.

Page 134 Quelle est cette harpe divine, entre les mains du
Dieu de la nature, dont les cordes universelles,
attachees a tous les coeurs, les lient et les relient
sans cesse? C'est la verite. Aux plus faibles sons
qui lui echappent toutes les nations deviennent
attentives, tout ressent la divine influence de
rharmonie universelle.

Page 137 Telle est, mes amis, la doctrine que je voulais vous
exposer avant de mourir . . . Telle est ma Religion . . .
et je permettrai aux tyrans d'envoyer ma monade
se prosterner devant l'ETERNEL. Valete et me amate.
10 juin 1793.

Page 138 Le fluide magnetique n'est autre chose que l'homme
universel lui-meme, emu et mis en mouvement par
une de ses emanations.

Ce qu'il y a de plus bizarre, c'est que le general
Bonaparte partant pour sa premiere campagne
dTtalie, voulut se faire predire, par le somnambu-
liste Mally-Chateaurenaud le sort qui l'attendait
a l'armee . . . Bonaparte crut que la bataille de
Castiglione realisait la prediction du somnambuliste
qu'il fit rechercher avec soin avant son depart pour
l'Egypte.

Page 143 II faut jeter au feu toutes les theories politiques,
morales et economiques, et se preparer a l'evene-
ment le plus etonnant . . . AU PASSAGE SUBIT DU
CHAOS SOCIAL A L'HARMONIE UNIVERSELLE.

FRENCH PASSAGES 209

Je reconnus bientot que les lois de l'Attraction
passionnee etaient en tout point conformes a celles
de l'Attraction materielle, expliquees par Newton
et Leibnitz, et qu'il y avait UNITE DE SYSTEME
DE MOUVEMENT POUR LE MONDE MATERIEL
ET POUR LE MONDE SPIRITUEL.

Page 144 Mais si la decouverte est l'ouvrage d'un inconnu,
d'un provincial ou paria scientifique, d'un de ces
intrus qui ont comme Prion le tort de n'etre pas
meme academiciens, il doit encourir tous les ana-
themes de la cabale.

Page 145 M. VINAQUIN— Assurement. Demandez a la
table, c'est-a-dire a 1'esprit qui est dedans; il vous
dira que j'ai au-dessus de la tete un tuyau immense
de fluide qui monte de mes cheveuz jusqu'auz
astres; c'est une trompe aromale par laquele la voiz
des esprits de Saturne vient jusqu'a mon oreille . . .
LA TABLE (frapant vivement du pie) — Oui, oui,
oui. Trompe aromale. Canal. Trompe aromale.
Canal. Canal. Canal. Canal. Oui. (Erdan's peculiar
spelling is retained here.)

Page 146 M. Owen, le socialiste celebre . . . qui a ete jusqu'ici
materialiste dans toute la force du mot, a ete par-
faitement converti a la croyance de l'immortalite
par les conversations qu'il a eues avec des personnes
de sa famille mortes depuis des annees.

que l'objet des manifestations generates actueiles
est de reformer la population de notre planete, de
nous convaincre tous de la verite d'une autre vie,
de nous rendre tous sincerement charitables.

Page 147 II sera prouve enfin, par les principes qui forment
le systeme des influences ou du magnetisme animal,
combien il est important pour l'harmonie physique
et morale de l'homme de s'assembler frequemment
en societes nombreuses . . . ou toutes les intentions
et les volontes soient dirigees vers un et meme
objet, surtout vers Tordre de la nature, en chantant,
en priant ensemble; et que c'est dans ces situations
que l'harmonie qui commence a se troubler dans
quelques individus peut se retablir et que la sante
se raffermit.

210 APPENDIX 7

Page 148 Nos savants ne voulaient point de magnetisme,
comme d'autres hommes point de liberte . . . [mais]
les anneaux de la chaine despotique que la science
n'avait point voulu rompre ont vole en eclats.

Rejouissez-vous magnetiseurs, voici l'aurore d'un
bel et grand jour . . . O Mesmer! toi qui aimais la
republique . . . tu pressentais les temps; mais . . . tu
ne fus point compris.

Page 150 La science n'est done pas un vain mot comme la
vertu! Mesmer a vaincu Brutus.

Page 151 le fantastique, le mysterieux, l'occulte, l'inexpli-
cable.

Voltaire, des Encyclopedistes tombe; qu'on se lasse
enfin de tout, surtout de raisonner froidement;
qu'il faut des jouissances plus vives, plus deli-
cieuses, du sublime, de I'incomprehensible, du
surnaturel.

Page 153 II voulait etre un grand homme et il le fut par
d'incessantes projections de ce fluide plus puissant
que l'electricite, et dont il fait de si subtiles analyses
dans Louis Lambert.

Page 154 II existe un fluide magnetique tres subtil, lien chez
l'homme entre Tame et le corps; sans siege particu-
lier, il circule dans tous les nerfs qu'il tend et detend
au gre de la voionte. II est l'esprit de la vie; sa couleur
est celle de l'etincelle electrique ... les regards,
ces rayonnements de l'esprit de vie, sont la chaine
mysterieuse qui, a travers l'espace, relie sympathi-
quement les ames.

La voionte, nous disait un jour H. de Balzac, est la
force motrice du fluide imponderable, et les mem-
bres en sont les agents conducteurs.

la doctrine de Mesmer, qui reconnaissait en l'homme
l'existence d'une influence penetrante . . . mise en
oeuvre par la voionte, curative par Tabondance du
fluide.

Le magnetisme animal, aux miracles duquel je me
suis familiarise depuis 1820; les belles recherches
de Gall, le continuateur de Lavater, tous ceux qui

FRENCH PASSAGES

depuis cinquante ans ont travaille la pensee comme
les opticiens ont travaille la lumiere, deux choses
quasi semblables, concluent et pour les mystiques,
ces disciples de l'apotre Saint Jean, et pour les
grands penseurs qui ont etabli le monde spirituel.

Page 156 fluide insaisissable, base des phenomenes de la
volonte humaine, et d'ou resultent les passions,
les habitudes, les formes du visage et du crane.

Page 157 la science, sous pretexte de merveillosite, s'est
soustraite au devoir scientifique, qui est de tout
approfondir.

Page 162 Sur terre je vous respectais, mais ici nous sommes
egaux.

Page 164 S'il faut etre juge, que ce soit done par un public
eclaire et impartial: e'est a son tribunal que j'en
appelle avec confiance, ce tribunal supreme dont
les corps scientifiques eux-memes sont forces de
respecter les arrets.

Cest au public que j'en appelle.

Page 165 Paris est plein de jeunes gens qui prennent quelque
facilite pour du talent, de clercs, commis, avocats,
militaires, qui se font auteurs, meurent de faim,
mendient meme, et font des brochures.

INDEX

Academie Francaise, 41
Academy of Medicine, 141
Academy of Sciences: and anti-
mesmerist movement, 48, 62,
83; and Marat, 93, 94; and
Carra, 99; mentioned, 17, 20,
22, 28, 29, 113, 161
Alael, 33

Alchemy, 12, 33-34, 68, 70, 127
Alembert, J-B. LeRond d', 59
Alexander I, Tsar of Russia, 139-
140

Allonville, comte d', 138
American Philosophical Society,
91

American Revolution, 41, 88,
110

Animalculism, see Preformation
theory

Artois, C. P. de Bourbon, comte
d', 48

Assembly of Notables, 41, 42, 163
Avignon, 31

Bacon, Sir Francis, 39
Bailly, J. S., 11, 38, 62, 113, 118,
148n

Ballanche, Pierre, 142-143
Balloon flights, 10, 18-22, 41, 162
Balzac, Honore de, 150, 153-157;

Gautier on, 152-153
Barbaroux, C. J. M., 28
Barberin, chevalier de, 68, 69
Barruel, abbe, 73, 131, 163
Bastille, 83, 97, 105
Bayle, Pierre, 39
Bayonne, 52, 58

Bergasse, Nicolas: and Society
of Harmony, 51-52, 75-78, 112,
114, 180-182; and Kornmann
group, 72, 78-80; lectures on
mesmerism, 76-77, 183-185;
defense of mesmerism, 84-87;
wealth, 101-102; anti-aristo-
cratic convictions, 103-104;

political ideas, 112-125, 146,
147; and Rousseau, 117-118;
and Duchesse de Bourbon,
128, 130; and Tsar Alexander I,
139-140; mentioned, 3, 44, 47,
70, 83, 96, 163, 166
Bergerac, 74

Berkeley, Bishop George, 11
Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Henri,
12

Berthollet, Claude, comte, 52
Bertholon, abbe, 14, 39
Besancon, 66
Bibliotheque du Roi, 100
Black, Joseph, 16
Blackwell, Anna, 146
Bleton, 31, 96
Boehme, Jacob, 12
Boerhaave, Herman, 18
Bonnet, Charles, 13, 39
Bonneville, Nicolas de, 133-135
Bordeaux, 22, 52, 58, 70, 74
Boston, 28
Bottineau, 96

Bourbon, duchesse de, 70, 128-

130, 139, 149
Braid, James, 142
Breteuil, L. A. Le Tonnelier,

baron de, 42
Brienne, E. C. Lomenie de, 88,

123, 163

Brissot de Warville, J. -P.: and
Kornmann group, 79, 95, 100;
prerevolutionary radicalism,
83, 88, 91-98, 111-112, 163-
167; attack on academicians,
84; and Marat, 92-94; defense
of mesmerism, 95-98, 104;
antimesmerist after Revolu-
tion, 130-131; and Cercle
Social, 134, 135; mentioned,
3, 32, 44, 111, 146

Buffon, G. L. Leclerc, comte de,
11, 12, 14, 39, 59

Buzancy, 58

214 INDEX

Cabalism, 68, 69
Cabanis, P.-J.-G., 156
Cagliostro, comte de (Giuseppe

Balsamo), 33, 36, 47, 70
Cahagnet, L.-A., 141
Calais, 28

Calonne, C.-A. de, 42, 88, 89, 163

Caloric, 10, 38, 136

Carbonarism, 146

Carra, J.-L.: in Kornmann group,
80, 88; attack on scientific
establishment, 98-100, 104;
early life, 100; his politico-
mesmerism, 107-111, 163-167;
and mesmerism of the Revolu-
tion, 133-135; mentioned, 26,
44, 146, 179

Castres, 52, 66

Caveau, Cafe du, 27, 54

Cavendish, Henry, 16

Cazotte, Jacques, 70

Cercle Social, 132-134

Channel Islands, 158

Charcot, J. M, 142

Chastellux, F.-J., marquis de,
75, 77

Chateaubriand, F. R., vicomte

de, 149, 150
Chemistry: early discoveries in,

16-17
Chevalier, Claude, 33
Chevaliers Bienfaisants de la

Cite Sainte, Ordre des, 68
Chevaliers des Elus Coens,

Ordre des, 68
Chilean monster, 31-32
Claviere, Etienne, 79, 134, 163
Coigny, due de, 74
Coigny, Hotel de, 52, 72, 75
Committee of General Security,

129

Committee of Public Safety, 129,
132

Concorde, Society of, 68
Condillac, Etienne Bonnot de,

39, 60, 157
Condorcet, H. J. A. de Caritat,

marquis de, 24, 29, 61, 134,

137, 189-192

Constance, 47

Constant, Benjamin, 140, 149,
150

Convention, 146, 147
Convulsionaries, 36, 62
Coppet, 149

Corberon, baron de, 76-77, 116,
180-182

Court de Gebelin, Antoine:
Museum of, 24, 99; as mes-
merist, 38, 116-117; men-
tioned, 96, 134, 146, 166, 178

Creteil, 48

Dante Alighieri, 158
Danton, G. J., 137
Darwin, Erasmus, 13
Dauphiny, 31
Decremps, Henri, 28
Delaage, Henri, 140, 153-154
Delacroix, Eugene, 150
Deleuze, ]. P. F., 141, 144n
De Maistre, Joseph, 139, 143
Descartes, Rene, 12, 39, 60, 115
Deslon, Charles: early champion
of Mesmer, 48, 50; death, 50,
87; quarrel with Mesmer, 51;
investigated by royal commis-
sion on mesmerism, 62-63;
mentioned, 65, 115
Desmoulins, Camille, 134
Diamond Necklace, Affair of the,
41

Diderot, Denis, 39, 59, 155
Digby, Sir Kenelm, 33
Dijon, 52, 99

Docteurs modernes, Les, 65-66
Douai, 52
le Dru, Nicolas, 30
Duluc, Perisse, 68
Dumas, Alexandre, 150
Duplessis, Marie, 150
Dupont de Nemours, P. S., 136-
137

Duport, Adrien: mesmerist, 44,
111; in Society of Harmony,
75; in Kornmann group, 78,
80n, 88, 105; as revolutionary,
104, 163, 166

INDEX 215

Du Potet de Sennevoy, baron,
141

Ecole Militaire, 32

"Elastic shoes" hoax, 23-24

Elder, Alina d', 140

Electricity, 10-12, 14-15, 16,
28-29, 60

Epremesnil, J. -J. Duval d': mes-
merist, 65, 75; participation in
Kornmann group, 72, 78-79,
88, 105; political role, 104-105,
163, 166; mentioned, 36, 44,
66, 87

Erdan, Alexandre, 145

Estates General, 40, 41, 88, 102,
105, 123

Euler, Leonhard, 11

Fabre d'Olivet, Antoine, 138-

139, 142
Faria, abbe, 140

Fauchet, abbe Claude, 134-135
Feuillants, 75, 131
Fludd, Robert, 14
Fourier, Charles, 143-145, 147
Franklin, Benjamin, 10, 62, 64,
146

Frederick II, King of Prussia, 32
Freemasonry, 68, 76, 132, 140

Gall, F. G., 154, 156
Gallo- American Society, 89
Galvani, Luigi, 14
Gassner, J. J., 48

Gautier, Theophile, 151-153
Genevan Revolution, 83
Gerard, A.-C, 67
Gerle, dom, 130
Gillies, John, 98

Girardin, Madame Emile de, 153,
158

Girondists, 79, 84, 111, 134-135,
167

Goethe, J. W. von, 34
Gorsas, A.-J., 79-80, 163
Graham, James, 15, 36
Grenoble, 52
le Gros, abbe, 117

Guillotin, J. I., 62

Hardenberg, K. A., prince von,
149

Hardy, S.-P., 40, 105
Harmonica, glass, 8, 151
Harvey, William, 12
Heine, Heinrich, 149
Helmont, J. B. van, 14
Helvetius, C. A., 39, 59
Hennequin, Victor, 144
Hervier, pere, 55-58, 61
Hippocrates, 116
Hoffmann, E. T. W., 149
Holy Alliance, 139-140
Hugo, Leopoldine, 157, 158
Hugo, Victor, 150, 157-158
Humboldt, Alexander von, 14
Hume, David, 39

Jacobins, 74, 129, 146
Jansenism, 36, 61
Jaucourt, marquis de, 74
Jefferson, Thomas, 65-66, 88,

89, 146
Johnson, Samuel, 158
Josephine (de Beauharnais), 138
Jussieu, A. L., 107

Koreff, D.-F., 140, 149-150
Kornmann group: formation, 72;
as radical center, 78-80, 88,
95, 163; mentioned, 100, 105,
107

Kornmann, Guillaume: and
Society of Harmony, 51, 75;
and Kornmann group, 72, 78,
80; adultery suit, 122-123

Kriidener, Juliane de Vieting-
hoff, baronne de, 139-140, 149

LaBlancherie, M.-C. Pahin de,

24, 26, 179
Labre de Damette, B. J., 33
Labrousse, Suzette, 129-130
Lafayette, M. J., marquis de:
contribution to "elastic shoes"
experiment, 23; member of
Society of Harmony, 75; in

216 INDEX

Kornmann group, 78-79; in-
fluence of mesmerism on, 88-
90, 163, 166; mentioned, 44
LaHarpe, J. F. de, 40, 65, 87, 97,
133

Lalande, Joseph, 99, 136
Lamartine, Alphonse de, 150
Lameth, Alexandre, 131
Lameth, Charles, 131
LaMettrie, Julien Offroy de, 39
Lanthenas, Francois, 111
LaPlace, P. S., marquis de, 11
Lauzun, due de, 74
Lavater, J. C, 34, 70, 95, 149,
154, 156

Lavoisier, A. L. de: chemical
experiments, 10, 17; opposi-
tion to scientific fantasies, 16;
member of commission on
mesmerism, 38, 62, 64; at-
tacked by Carra, 99; men-
tioned, 12, 15, 18, 22, 28, 136,
161

Leibniz, G. W., 39, 143, 155
Lenoir, J.-P., 86, 122
Lenormand, mademoiselle, 140
Leon le Juif, 33
Leroux, Pierre, 145
Liancourt, due de, 131
Linguet, S.-N.-H., 28
Linnaeus, Carl, 13
Locke, John, 39, 41, 60, 157
Loge Elue et Cherie, 68
London, 97
Louis XVI, 88
Lycurgus, 108

Lyons, 51, 52, 68-70, 101, 142,
162

Mably, Gabriel Bonnot de, 134
Macon, 100
Macquer, P. J., 11
Mallet du Pan, Jacques, 28, 165
Mally-Chateaurenaud, 138
Marat, J.-P.: scientific studies,
42, 44; friendship with Brissot,
92, 94; quarrel with scientific
establishment, 93-94, 164-
165; and mesmerism, 94-95;
mentioned, 39, 99, 161

Marie-Antoinette, 51
Marivetz, J.-C, baron de, 99
Marseilles, 27, 52
Martines de Pasqually, 69
Martinism, 68-69, 127, 128, 133,
145

Matthews, J. T., 131

Maupertuis, P.-L. Moreau de, 39

Maurepas, J. F. Phelypeaux,
comte de, 51, 84, 86

Maxwell, William, 14

Medical Faculty (University of
Paris), 48, 62, 83-84, 94, 144

Meister, J.-H., 24, 40, 61

Mercier, L.-S., 24, 33, 38

Mesmer, F.A.: his version of
animal magnetism, 3-10, 177;
early life, 47-48; struggle to
establish his science in Paris,
48-51, 62-65, 83-85, 90-91;
and the Society of Harmony,
51-52, 180-182; late career,
71-72; as revolutionary Uto-
pian, 146-148

Metz, 18

Meusnier de la Place, J.-B., 17
Mical, abbe, 28

Mirabeau, H. G. Riqueti, comte

de, 32, 131, 132
Moliere, J.-B. Poquelin, 15
Montesquieu, C.-L. de Secondat,

baron de, 166
Montjoie, Galart de, 52
Montlosier, F. de Reynaud,

comte de, 59
Montpellier, 52

Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 41,
47

Muiron, Just, 144

Nantes, 22, 52

Napoleon, 138, 139

National Assembly, 166; Con-
stitutional Committee of, 118

Newton, Sir Isaac: and invisible
forces, 10, 11; revised by late
eighteenth-century theoreti-
cians, 18, 93, 94, 115; men-
tioned, 15, 39, 55, 100, 143, 165

Nimes, 52

INDEX 217

Nodier, Charles, 135, 149
Nollet, abbe J. A., 14, 15, 26
Nostradamus, Michel de, 131

Oberkirch, baronne d', 70

Oegger, J. G. E., 156

Olivier, Joseph, 144

Orleans, due d' (Philippe

Egalite), 129, 131
Owen, Robert, 146

Paine, Thomas, 134
Paracelsus, 14, 17, 152
Parlement of Paris, 36, 85-88,

105, 162-163
Pascal, Blaise, 61
Petetin, J.-H.-D., 68
Petiot, abbe, 103
Petit-Thouars, Perpetue du, 102,

118

Philadelphia, 89
Philalethes, Ordre des, 70
Phlogiston, 10, 16
Physiognomy, 127, 156
Pilatre de Rozier, Francois, 18,

24, 28, 42, 178
Pinetti, Joseph, 27
Plantade, Francois de, 12
Pluche, abbe, 12
Pontard, Pierre, 129-130
Preformation theory, 12-13, 32
Priestley, Joseph, 16, 26, 28
Provence, 32

Puysegur, A.-M.-J. de Chastenet,
marquis de, 58, 68-69, 96, 139

Puysegur, J.-M.-P. de Chastenet,
comte de, 58

Redern, J. S. E., comte de, 145
Renaux, A. J., 32
Restif de la Bretonne, N.-E., 32,
132-134

Richelieu, A. -J. du Plessis de,

cardinal, 91
Robespierre, Maximilien, 41, 42,

129, 137, 161
Robinet, J.-B.-R., 39
Roland de la Platiere, J.-M., 44,

111, 135

Roland de la Platiere, madame,
44, 111, 134

Romanticism, German, 149-150
Rosicrucianism, 68, 70, 127
Roume de Saint Laurent, P.-R.,
94

Rousseau, J. -J.: his Social Con-
tract, 3, 41, 83, 162; and Brissot,

83, 96; and Carra, 110; and
Bergasse, 116-124; mentioned,
39, 134, 166

Royal Society, 91

Royal Society of Medicine, 48,

62, 66, 83-85, 107
Ruer, 33

Sabathier de Cabre, H. A., 79
Saint Germain, C.-L., comte de,
33

Saint Hubert, 33

Saint-Martin, L.-C. de, 34, 36,
68-69, 70, 139, 149, 156, 157

Saint-Simon, C. H., comte de,
145

Saltzmann, Rodolphe, 68
Savalette de Langes, 70
Schlegel, A. G. de, 149
Schweizer, J.-C, 70
Schweizer, Magdalene, 70, 130
Segur, L.-P., comte de, 51, 74, 89
Seiffert, Andre, 135
Servan, A.-J.-M., 59-60, 61, 73,

84, 96, 113
Shakers, 89

Shakespeare, William, 158

Sieves, abbe E. J., 104, 111, 134

Societe des Trente, 81n

Societe Francaise des Amis des
Noirs, 81n, 89

Societe Harmonique des Amis
Reunis, 67, 70

Society of Universal Harmony:
foundation, 51-52; provincial
branches, 66-70, 74; schism,
72, 77-78, 163; character and
organization, 73-77, 180-182;
revived after Revolution as
Society of Mesmerism, 141-
142; emblem and textbook,
186-188; mentioned, 69, 89,
103, 116, 147, 151

Solon, 139

218 INDEX

Somnambulism: and spiritual-
ism, 8, 69, 70, 128; discovery
of, 58, 148; and French Revolu-
tion, 130-131, 133; and Resto-
ration, 141, 142; and Fourier,
144; and Balzac, 153, 155

Stael, baron de, 149

Stael, madame de, 149

Stahl, G. E., 18, 136

Stendhal (Henri Beyl), 150

Stockholm, 67

Strasbourg, 51, 52, 67, 68, 70
Swedenborgianism, 67, 68, 127,

128, 139, 149, 155-157
Switzerland, 146

Talleyrand, baron de, 74
Theosophy, 68-69
Theot, Catherine, 129-130
Thomassin, madame, 130-131
Thomson, Charles, 89
Thouret, M. A., 84
Turckheim, Bernard de, 68
Turgot, A.-R.-J., 136

Universal Confederation of
Friends of the Truth, 132

Vergennes, C. G., comte de, 42
Vienna, 47-48
Vitalism, 14-15

Voltaire, F.-M Arouet, 10, 59,
137, 151, 165

Washington, George, 88
Water witching, 31, 156
Willermoz, J.-B., 34, 68-69, 139